As a former columnist myself, I can attest that one of the hardest acts in journalism is finding one's sea legs. It takes several columns to develop a "voice" and a rhythm. This difficulty is heightened when the column is unprecedented.
Thus I've been willing to cut a lot of slack to Daniel Okrent, The Times' "public editor" or ombudsman. The Times has never had a "public editor" and doesn't have a culture of examining and explaining its practices to the public. Okrent's initial columns were hesitant, his punches pulled.
That's over now. Okrent's column in Sunday's paper, The Public Editor: All the News That’s Fit to Print? Or Just Our News?, is a fine piece of journalistic criticism.
Okrent takes on the Not-Invented-Here syndrome. He provides chapter-and-verse on the institutional hubris that won't allow The Times to build on the work of other news organizations and calls for changes.
What could Okrent do better? Write more often. Okrent writes a single long column once every two weeks. That's not enough. Many other journalist bloggers have suggested, correctly, that Okrent should have The Times' first blog, where he can have a much more direct relationship with the readers, at any time and to whatever length required.
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