Okrent's last column as Public Editor of the NYT

[Brian Olewnick]

I'm prejudiced, but I thought Dan did a fine job in his year and a half there, if only for opening up several key issues (like unnamed sources) to general discussion, though there was much more, almost always handled with wonderful humor and grace. Thought I'd throw in his last column here as, per usual, he makes a number of fine points.

***************************

May 22, 2005
13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did

By DANIEL OKRENT
AND so all good (and tense and terrible and exciting) things must come to an end. When I began in this job in December 2003, I had a list of about 20 topics I knew I wanted to address. In the ensuing months, I got to about half of those, and devoted the rest of my time and space to issues that exploded out of the pages of the paper and my e-mail in-box. The 10 I never got to are now hanging in a closet with about 50 others. What follows, you will soon see, is an all but random selection.

1. In my very first column I identified myself as "an absolutist" on the First Amendment. Apart from having come to realize that absolutism in the pursuit of self-definition can be a bit reckless, my thoughts on journalism and the First Amendment have changed considerably. I still cherish the First; I still think it's the cornerstone of democracy. But I would love to see journalists justify their work not by wrapping themselves in the cloak of the law, but by invoking more persuasive defenses: accuracy, for instance, and fairness.

As a corollary, in some arenas the First Amendment may not even be the most effective legal defense. The idea that Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine's Matthew Cooper may soon be imprisoned for not naming a source is nausea-inducing - especially since the source remains free. (No one is suggesting that Miller and Cooper may have broken the law; the source may well have.) Reporters Glenn Kessler and Walter Pincus, both of The Washington Post, were represented by criminal lawyers in the same case and are today going on with their lives, while those who have depended on a First Amendment defense may soon be packing for jail.

2. Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults. Maureen Dowd was still writing that Alberto R. Gonzales "called the Geneva Conventions 'quaint' " nearly two months after a correction in the news pages noted that Gonzales had specifically applied the term to Geneva provisions about commissary privileges, athletic uniforms and scientific instruments. Before his retirement in January, William Safire vexed me with his chronic assertion of clear links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, based on evidence only he seemed to possess.

No one deserves the personal vituperation that regularly comes Dowd's way, and some of Krugman's enemies are every bit as ideological (and consequently unfair) as he is. But that doesn't mean that their boss, publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., shouldn't hold his columnists to higher standards.

I didn't give Krugman, Dowd or Safire the chance to respond before writing the last two paragraphs. I decided to impersonate an opinion columnist.

3. Question: What do these characterizations have in common?:

"At the first sound of her peremptory voice and clickety stiletto heels, people dart behind doors and douse the lights." - Television critic Alessandra Stanley on Katie Couric, April 25. "A semicelebrated hustler Ms. Lakshmi may be." - Fashion writer Guy Trebay on Padma Lakshmi, Feb. 8 .

"Le mot juste here is 'jackass.' " - Book reviewer Joe Queenan on writer A. J. Jacobs, Oct. 3 .

Answer: Each is gratuitously nasty, and inappropriate in a newspaper that many of us look to as a guardian of civil discussion. I'll put the chart that appeared in the Feb. 20 edition of The Times's T: Women's Fashion magazine, touting oxycontin as a status symbol, in the same repellent category.

4. Last July, when I slapped the headline "Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?" atop my column and opened the piece with the catchy one-liner "Of course it is," I wasn't doing anyone - the paper, its serious critics, myself - any favors. I'd reduced a complex issue to a sound bite. The column itself, I'll stand by; I still believe the paper is the inevitable product of its staff's experience and worldview, and that its news coverage reflects a generalized acceptance of liberal positions on most social issues.

For The Times's ideologically fueled detractors on the right, though, there was no reason to invoke this somewhat more complex analysis when they could paint my more incendiary words on a billboard: "According to The Times's own Daniel Okrent. ..." I may wish they'd live by one of the same standards they ask The Times to adhere to - the fair representation of controversial opinions. But I handed them a machine gun when a pistol would have sufficed.

5. Reader Steven L. Carter of Bala Cynwyd, Pa., asks, If "Tucker Carlson is identified as a conservative" in The Times, then why is "Bill Moyers just, well, plain old Bill Moyers"? Good question.

6. There are few traits more valuable to a great cultural critic than a consistent aesthetic viewpoint. But a consistent aesthetic viewpoint inevitably fosters blind spots in the field of vision. If a critic just doesn't like the work of a particular playwright (or painter or singer or novelist), both the playwright and the readers lose out. He never gets a fair chance; we never get a fresh take. How about term limits - say, 10 years - for critics?

7. If you've been noticing more and more unfamiliar bylines in the paper, it's no accident. Additional sections, the demands of The Times's Web site and its television operation, and generalized economic pressures have spread finite staff resources across the requirements of a much wider mission, and have increased the paper's dependence on freelance writers.

Now, I've got nothing against freelance writers; I've been one myself, and tomorrow morning I'll become one again. It's a respectable way to make a living (even if a fiscally preposterous one). Though Times freelancers agree to abide by the paper's ethical rules and professional standards, there's no way someone who's working for The Times today, some other publication tomorrow and yet another on Tuesday can possibly absorb and live by The Times's complex code as fully as staff members. Unrevealed conflicts, violations of Times-specific reporting rules and a variety of other problems have repeatedly found their way to my office over the past 18 months.

The economic pressures on all newspapers are real, of course, and no modern newspaper can thrive unless it commits resources to new forms of distribution. I'm sure The Times devotes a larger share of its revenue to reporting than any other paper in the nation. But the price of stretching a staff too thin, and of patching the weak spots with day labor, could be much, much more expensive.

8. In the Travel section, the Escapes section and the occasional travel editions of the Sunday magazine now called T: Travel magazine, why are the restaurants almost always delightful, the hotels hospitable, the views glorious, the experiences rewarding? This is a weird form of crypto-journalism; if the theater critics were so chronically uncritical, they'd be hooted off the stage.

9. It's a story, say, about the New York City public schools. In the first paragraph a parent, apparently picked at random, testifies that they haven't improved. Readers are clearly expected to draw conclusions from this.

But it isn't clear why the individual was picked; it isn't possible to determine whether she's representative; and there's no way of knowing whether she knows what she's talking about. Calling on the individual man or woman on the street to make conclusive judgments is beneath journalistic dignity. If polls involving hundreds of people carry a cautionary note indicating a margin of error of plus-or-minus five points, what kind of consumer warning should be glued to a reporter's ad hoc poll of three or four respondents?

10. Six months ago, I applied the adjectives "arrogant" and "condescending" to the culture editors who had so badly botched their radical revision/evisceration of the Sunday arts listings. Therefore, on the heels of last month's reintroduction of the vastly improved listings in the Weekend section, and the total remake of a coming-events page in Arts & Leisure, I owe them new adjectives - like "responsive" and "deft." They did a wonderful job.

11. Thank yous: I've mentioned my associate Arthur Bovino several times in my column, but at no point have I said that without him there wouldn't even be a public editor's office; the roof would have caved in months ago. Copy editors Steve Coates and John Wilson have at many points prevented me from making a fool of myself (when they failed, it wasn't for lack of trying). My old friend Corby Kummer, moonlighting from his job at The Atlantic Monthly, read and commented on all my columns before they went into the paper. Susan Kirby edited the periodic letters columns. Several score members of the staff of The Times were helpful, tolerant and pleasant, yet always true to the institution.

Mostly, of course, I have to thank the paper's readers. I especially cherish those whose periodic unhappiness with The Times, even at its most intense, is the byproduct of their loyalty to the paper, and their appreciation of its importance to their lives.

This attitude was best symbolized by a lengthy message I received my first week on the job, from the economist and former Wall Street Journal editorialist Jude Wanniski. His letter coursed through page after page of criticism of The Times's coverage of topics as diverse as its unquestioning acceptance of the assertion that Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurds during the Iraq-Iran war (Wanniski maintains the Iranians were responsible for the atrocity) and the paper's abiding disregard for supply-side economics. At the end of this acidulous letter, Wanniski appended a P.S. "Having said that," he wrote, "it remains one of my life's great daily pleasures."

12. I wish I hadn't made so much noise, in print and in various interviews, about how hard this job was. Dexter Filkins, in Baghdad, has a hard job; Steven Erlanger, in Jerusalem, has a hard job. By any reasonable standard, public editor is a walk in the park.

13. During a tense encounter with a group of writers 17 months ago, economics reporter Louis Uchitelle asked what I hoped my legacy would be. I really had no answer, but like any good reporter, Uchitelle persisted; like any unprepared news subject, I dodged.

But a response came to me on the subway that evening, and I sent it to Uchitelle the next morning. "The true contribution that I can make to The Times," I wrote, "will be the product of 18 months of policies restated, staff members angered, readers disgruntled, procedures revised, and all the other missteps and false starts that must arise from an effort as new, as untested, and as inchoate as this one. When I move on, my successor will know how to do the job, and the people at The Times will know how to deal with it."

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Barney Calame.

[Jon Abbey]

definitely some good points there, I wish that this wasn't the first column of his I'd seen, since as I told you a few weeks ago, this is one of the Times Sunday sections I never look at.

[Il Anto]

Yeah, thanks for posting that, Brian. That was enjoyable. Okrent also did an interview with Columbia Journalism Review, which is a good read as well:

http://www.cjr.org/issues/2005/3/okrent.asp

[Dr Dave]

Very good. As a former freelancer, and employer of freelancers, I was appreciative of his take on their fallibilities. It's the strongest argument I've seen yet for a totally staff-written newspaper/magazine.

I also had to cringe at his travel writing comments, since I did a form of that, also. The best I can say is that hotels know you're coming, and they put on their best face for you. On the other hand, as one who hired and edited any number of travel writers, I feel entitled to say that most of them are the bottom-feeders of the journalistic trade. All they know how to do is write about what they saw and did. Research? Forget it.

[Monte Smith]

Not a bad column. Okrent wasn't "public editor" very long, was he? The Times may regard his passing as the end of an era. The end of an irritation, that is.

By the way, what the hell did the NYT do to my Sunday? First they revamp the book section into an ugly reduction of itself, and then they move all their most boring columnists to the Sabbath in order to double the op/ed content (double the column inches, not the intelligence). Banished to midweek are Friedman and Dowd. Replacing them are Frank Rich (whose political op/ed we already had in full on Sundays in the art pages), and snooze-enducers Nicholas Kristoff and David Brooks. If I wanted that kind of stimulation, I'd eat chalk.

[Jon Abbey]

did Okrent ever go after how dreadfully out of touch their sports columns are, specifically Murray Chass? it's pretty embarrassing, and I know he's a big baseball fan.

[Brian Olewnick]

No, I don't think he ever made any mention one way or the other of the sports section. There are certain NYT sports columnists, however, for whom he's expressed withering scorn, especially a particular one who likes to make use of stats and clearly doesn't have the foggiest idea how to do so.

btw, there will apparently be some sort of give and take between Dan and Krugman this week on the Times site, Krugman having been outraged that someone would dare to question his integrity. Could be fun.

[Captain Hate]

Originally Posted by Brian Olewnick

btw, there will apparently be some sort of give and take between Dan and Krugman this week on the Times site, Krugman having been outraged that someone would dare to question his integrity. Could be fun.

I'll have to go to bugmenot.com for this one. If Krugman is going to cross swords with Okrent in an open forum then he's even dumber than I thought he was.

[Brian Olewnick]

Originally Posted by Captain Hate

I'll have to go to bugmenot.com for this one. If Krugman is going to cross swords with Okrent in an open forum then he's even dumber than I thought he was.

Maybe. I think Dan's pretty careful when he tosses out charges but, otoh, I'm sure Krugman (like most experienced pundits of any stripe) is very skillful at slithering out of corners. I'd be way surprised if either "admitted defeat" at the end of it.

[Captain Hate]

Originally Posted by Brian Olewnick

I'm sure Krugman (like most experienced pundits of any stripe) is very skillful at slithering out of corners. I'd be way surprised if either "admitted defeat" at the end of it.

I'm sure Mitch "Blood" Green honestly thought he kicked Tyson's ass.

[Root Doctor]

Joe Queenan's comment about A.J. Jacobs is both funny and appropriate.

[tristano's ghost]

Okrent's parting shot at Krugman was cheap, cheap.

[Brian Olewnick]

Originally Posted by tristano's ghost

Okrent's parting shot at Krugman was cheap, cheap.

Krugman's loose use of numbers to support his own positions and lack of reporting on numbers that don't has been well-documented in the past. I imagine if he had taken the same shot at, say, David Brooks, you wouldn't have minded.

I'm trying to find out the date/time for the Okrent/Krugman encounter and will post it here when/if I do. I doubt Okrent will show up unarmed.

[tristano's ghost]

I wouldn't have minded in the sense that Brooks is an airhead compared to Krugman--but yes, if Okrent were to suddenly wait until his last column to lambast Brooks without supporting evidence, I'd consider that a cheap shot as well. Given the stranglehold that the right has on power & media in the country today, I don't stay up nights too much worrying whether or not some pompous rightwing pundit has been given a fair shake--that much is true.

[Brian Olewnick]

Originally Posted by tristano's ghost

I wouldn't have minded in the sense that Brooks is an airhead compared to Krugman--but yes, if Okrent were to suddenly wait until his last column to lambast Brooks without supporting evidence, I'd consider that a cheap shot as well. Given the stranglehold that the right has on power & media in the country today, I don't stay up nights too much worrying whether or not some pompous rightwing pundit has been given a fair shake--that much is true.

I had a similar conversation with another friend of mine this morning, a strong admirer of Krugman (actually much more left) who doesn't mind if he strays a bit from the facts given the establishment-leaning (left or right) predominance of most media, including the NYT. However, Okrent (though decidedly liberal) had a job that dealt specifically with the NYT, not it's place in the media spectrum. He has that old-fashioned idea that you simply do things right in your own area first, then worry about others.

For my money, I find Krugman and Brooks to be rough equivalents; I don't think either is particularly brilliant.

[tristano's ghost]

Brian,
I understand that Okrent was not there to be a "liberal" ref. My take, though, is that Okrent, like many in the media today who may incline liberal in their personal politics, ended up being rougher on libs than he ever was on the conservatives. He didn't say a word about Brooks in this column (has he taken him to task before?) for the many goofs DB has made... or how about Safire? One passing mention, and that's it? See Media Matters' rundown on Safire. Okrent's prior take on Safire's assertions was not only disappointing; it also seems at odds w/what he says about Krugman in his last column.

Did Okrent ever take on Judith Miller for her shameful WMD reporting? If he did, and I missed it, my apologies.

Sorry, but I also lost a lot of respect for Okrent when the Times took a gay reporter off its metro beat because he'd once been an activist for ACT-UP... and they continued to let Miller report on the Middle East and then the UN, despite her link to a neocon think-tanks. Okrent's reply to me about this issue was basically, "They're different sections of the paper... I don't see the problem." Don't see the problem?! The Metro section is so stringent that they won't let somebody who once worked as a spokesperson cover the city beat (even though he wasn't going to be writing about gay-rights issues) but the foreign desk lets Miller write about some of the most volatile and potentially violent topics in the world? Yeah, that's an "in-house" problem, and one that a responsible omb should call the paper out on.

At least he pulled back on the "Of course we're a liberal paper" and realized what a damaging thing that was to say. The right likes to operate with the notion that the NY Times represents the utter limits of acceptable liberal-left ideology, when in truth it's a very centrist paper.

[Brian Olewnick]

Good points. I thought Dan did some things on Miller early on, but I can't recall now. The Metro reporter is news to me--interesting.

As is often the case in these arguments, I don't think the grouping "liberal/conservative" (or left/right) is instructive as they're both too widely and loosely defined by either side. I prefer the blander Republican/Democrat, in which case (despite the Miller escapades), the NYT is certainly on the Dem side as far as its coverage, as Okrent outlined in the column in question, if somewhat more on social issues than strictly political ones. I have no particular problem with this just as I have no problem with Fox being Republican; I can glean info from either with their prejudices in mind.

[Brian Olewnick]

OK, here's the exchange so far. Not sure if more will come.
************************

bcalame - 11:49 AM ET May 31, 2005 (#2 of 2)

New Public Editor Hosts Paul Krugman-Daniel Okrent Debate

Daniel Okrent, in his May 22 farewell column as the first public editor of The New York Times, criticized Paul Krugman, an Op-Ed columnist for the newspaper. Prof. Krugman, who disputed the validity of Mr. Okrent's comments in the public editor's regular reader-letters column in The Times on Sunday, elaborated in a longer e-mail message for this Web Journal -- with the understanding that Mr. Okrent's response would be posted simultaneously.


* * *

Krugman Lays Out Why He Believes Okrent Was Wrong

When I asked Daniel Okrent for the specifics behind his final attack, he offered two examples of what he claimed was improper use of numbers. This was the first time I heard from him, or anyone else, about either alleged problem.

Let me start with the example that, I think, sheds most light on what is going on: Mr. Okrent’s claim that I engaged in "blending, without explanation, numbers from the household survey and the establishment survey -- apples and oranges -- apparently in order to make a more vivid political point about Bush (5/25/04).”

He’s referring to two different surveys conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which provide alternative estimates of employment. Some people play games by mixing and matching numbers from the two surveys, and Mr. Okrent has apparently spent the past year firmly believing (without having checked with me) that I did the same thing, to score political points. But I didn’t. All the numbers in my 5/25/04 column came from the establishment survey.

Moreover, I not only played fair with my readers, I urged them to check the data for themselves. Here’s what I wrote in the column:

“Go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site at stats.bls.gov. Click on ‘U.S. economy at a glance,’ then on the green dinosaur next to ‘Change in payroll employment’ for a 10-year chart of monthly job gains and losses.”

If Mr. Okrent had done that, he would have seen for himself that what I said about job growth was true.

For his other example, Mr. Okrent criticized me for “asserting that the 40 percent unemployed out of work for more than 15 weeks was a 20-year record" (2/10/04, 3/12/04) without acknowledging that the comparison only applies back to the redesign of the CPS questionnaire. See Polivka and Miller, The CPS After Redesign, on the BLS Web site.

This sounds like another accusation that I blended two sources of data, without telling readers. In fact, all I did was use the Bureau of Labor Statistics data series on long-term unemployment, which is available on the BLS Web site, where there is no indication given to the public of any problem with comparisons between different time periods. Lou Uchitelle did the same thing in an article published in the New York Times business section, "The New Profile of the Long-Term Unemployed," two days after Mr. Okrent’s blast. That article made the same point that I did in the columns Mr. Okrent criticized: long-term unemployment is unusually high.

After Mr. Okrent directed me to Polivka and Miller, I checked it out; it’s a 1995 research paper which suggested that the 1994 redesign of the Current Population Survey questionnaire might have raised estimates of long-term unemployment. It wasn’t an official statement that pre-1994 comparisons are improper, and the BLS didn’t consider the questions raised in that paper serious enough to warrant a warning for consumers of its data. Like most such consumers, I don’t go hunting for research papers suggesting possible problems with the numbers unless the BLS says there’s reason to be concerned otherwise, it would be impossible to get any work done. Let me also say that the issue is pretty trivial: adjusting the data might put long-term unemployment at a 10-year rather than 20-year high, but it’s unarguably very high by historical standards.

To summarize: when I asked Mr. Okrent for evidence of my malfeasance, he provided one example in which his description of what I did was simply wrong, and another in which he accused me of pulling a fast one on readers, when all I did was use official data in a standard way.

In correspondence with Mr. Okrent, I pointed out that his specific attacks -- especially the blatantly wrong characterization of my 5/25/04 column -- were unfair. I asked him to do what he would have expected me to do, and admit that he had been in error. He refused.

Let me repeat that Mr. Okrent never raised these issues as public editor. He now says that he didn’t because he “experienced your best-defense-is-a-good-offense approach, and found it futile to deal with it.”

Maybe a description of some of my experiences with him will give some sample of what he found difficult to deal with.

On 6/8/04, I made a numerical mistake, reading from the wrong line in a table of tax rates during the Reagan years. Although the mistake didn’t change the column’s conclusions, I reluctantly issued a correction. But I forgot to use the word “correction,” which I hear got Mr. Okrent upset.

Mr. Okrent questioned my assertion (10/12/04) that Congressional Budget Office estimates show tax cuts were responsible for two-thirds of the fiscal 2004 deficit. I explained that in each of its budget projections the CBO estimates how much of the change from its previous projection is due to changes in tax law, and that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities adds these numbers up to calculate the CBO’s implied estimate of the overall cost of tax cuts since 2000. I provided Mr. Okrent with the data used for that calculation.

Mr. Okrent challenged my assertion (5/9/05) that the Bush Social Security “progressive indexing” plan would impose its largest percentage reductions in retirement income on middle-income workers.

I explained that the term “retirement income” normally refers to income from all sources, not just Social Security benefits (the Social Security Administration says on its Web site that “you should not count only on Social Security for your retirement income.”) I supplied him with a study (pdf) that used Social Security Administration data to show that because high-income workers depend much less than middle-income workers on Social Security, they would have smaller percentage cuts in overall retirement income than middle-income workers. This was similar to a point I made, using different data, a week earlier (5/1/05), so I was surprised that Mr. Okrent even raised the issue.

If Mr. Okrent was unsatisfied with my explanations in these and other cases, it was his right to demand a fuller explanation, and, if he was still unsatisfied, to say something specific in his column.

I hope we aren’t going to get into an extended period in which Mr. Okrent, who failed to air his concerns when that was his job, then failed even in private to provide examples that bear any resemblance to what he accused me of doing, keeps throwing out new accusations.


* * *

Okrent Responds

For a man who makes his living offering strong opinions, Paul Krugman seems peculiarly reluctant to grant the same privilege to others. And for a man who leads with his chin twice a week, he acts awfully surprised when someone takes a pop at it.

Because only a fool or a supply-sider would eagerly engage in a debate on economics with Prof. Krugman, I’ll try to eschew argument and stick to facts – or, at least, the sort of statements that he himself represents as purely factual:

1. I offered him only three examples of “shaping, slicing and selectively citing” (for some reason, he’s left one out of his rebuttal) because I was at home when he began bombarding me with outraged demands for retraction and apology; I’d completed my tenure as public editor the preceding week, and did not have any files with me. When I had the chance to consult some of my reader mail later in the week, some of his greatest mis-hits immediately came to the fore. I’ll get to a few of those in point No. 5, below.

2. This was the first he heard from me on these specific issues partly because I learned early on in this job that Prof. Krugman would likely be more willing to contribute to the Frist for President campaign than to acknowledge the possibility of error. When he says he agreed “reluctantly” to one correction, he gives new meaning to the word “reluctantly”; I can’t come up with an adverb sufficient to encompass his general attitude toward substantive criticism. But I laid off for so long because I also believe that columnists are entitled by their mandate to engage in the unfair use of statistics, the misleading representation of opposing positions, and the conscious withholding of contrary data. But because they’re entitled doesn’t mean I or you have to like it, or think it’s good for the newspaper.

3. The mixing of household and establishment numbers in his 5/25/04 column: Missing from the BLS chart he cites is any number that even resembles the 140,000 new jobs each month needed to keep up with the growing population a statistic he cites in the column, and upon which he seems to have based some of his computations. To my knowledge, that number only appeared in the household survey.

4. The Polivka-Miller paper: On the substance, readers can come to their own conclusions by examining the report themselves, particularly the chart and related narrative addressing “Duration of Unemployment” on page 23 (pdf). On Prof. Krugman’s defense of his unfamiliarity with it, he’s effectively saying, “If I didn’t know about it, it must not be important.” This is a polemicist’s dodge; no self-respecting journalist would ever make such an argument.

5. Some other examples of Krugmania that popped out of my copious files:

• His 1/27/04 assertion that the cost of unemployment insurance “automatically” adds to the federal deficit. This two-fer misrepresents a pair of facts: that unemployment insurance is largely borne by the states, and that major federal contributions to the states come about only because of an act of Congress, which is hardly automatic.

• His 2/3/04 assertion that tax proposals offered by Democrats would help the 77 pecent of taxpayers in the 15 percent bracket or less. The most recent generally accepted figures available at the time indicated that the number was actually 64 percent.

• A very recent example that nonetheless escaped my memory until Prof. Krugman generously reminded me of it in his letter: His 5/9/05 column on progressive indexing. The column itself (without the ex post facto explanation) suggestively conflates “retirement income” and “social security benefits” without sufficient explanation, but with plenty of apparent point-making.

Believe me -- I could go on, as could a number of readers more sophisticated about economic matters than I am. (Among these are several who, like me, generally align themselves politically with Prof. Krugman, but feel he does himself and his cause no good when he heeds the roaring approval of his acolytes and dismisses his critics as ideologically motivated.) But I don’t want to engage in an extended debate any more than Prof. Krugman says he does. If he replies to this statement, as I imagine he will, I’ll let him have what he always insists on keeping for himself: the last word.

I hate to do this to a decent man like my successor, Barney Calame, but I’m hereby turning the Krugman beat over to him.

[Root Doctor]

Originally Posted by Brian Olewnick

This was the first he heard from me on these specific issues partly because I learned early on in this job that Prof. Krugman would likely be more willing to contribute to the Frist for President campaign than to acknowledge the possibility of error. When he says he agreed “reluctantly” to one correction, he gives new meaning to the word “reluctantly”; I can’t come up with an adverb sufficient to encompass his general attitude toward substantive criticism. But I laid off for so long because I also believe that columnists are entitled by their mandate to engage in the unfair use of statistics, the misleading representation of opposing positions, and the conscious withholding of contrary data. But because they’re entitled doesn’t mean I or you have to like it, or think it’s good for the newspaper.

Pretty lame.

[Brian Olewnick]

I scored this round 10-9 Krugman.

the charges Okrent levelled in that last column do not strike me
as well-supported by him now--the seem mostly beyond the pedantic pale
and are highly debatable. if his charges against Krugman hadn't been phrased in such a 'hay-maker' than maybe he'd have more credibility.
Krugman in a TKO!

This site sheds more (and better) light on Okrent's charges:

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/mai..._v_krugma.html

[Root Doctor]

From Salon:

Did Krugman win by T.K.O.?

Daniel Okrent, who just finished up his one-year stint as public editor of the New York Times, must have realized that leveling blistering attacks against several of the paper's Op-Ed columnists in his May 22 swan song would result in some bruised egos, not to mention a few forked-tongue replies. But Okrent clearly wasn't prepared for the pugilism of economics columnist Paul Krugman, who responded to Okrent's criticisms with an angry letter, published in the Times last Sunday, and with several outraged e-mails demanding a retraction and an apology.

It took Okrent, who may have been expecting to retire in peace, a few days to shoot back at Krugman, and then Krugman shot back again at Okrent, and then the two went back and forth one more time. The pair's entire fight -- over whether or not Krugman, in his columns, routinely plays fast and loose with economics data -- is now up on the the Web, and it's a doozy. Though we give the win to Krugman, who seems to have more of the facts on his side, Okrent gets points for style. Krugman attracts more than his fair share of detractors, but we haven't seen anyone get to him with the panache Okrent displays here.

Here's the blow-by-blow: It began with Okrent's one-sentence war cry. "Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults," he wrote on May 22. Okrent gave no examples of what he meant, and he deliberately didn't go to Krugman for comment before publication. (Okrent's justification: "I decided to impersonate an opinion columnist.") It was a cheeky thing to do; you might even say he was baiting Krugman.

And Krugman took the bait. He demanded that Okrent cite the specific columns in which he spotted Krugman "shaping, slicing and selectively citing" data. Okrent responded with a few citations of alleged Krugman mendacity; the most substantive involved a column published on May 24, 2004, in which Krugman used national employment data to argue that the Bush economy wasn't doing as well as the White House was saying at the time. According to Okrent, Krugman sinned by drawing his numbers from two different measures of employment -- the establishment survey and the household survey, each of which provides a different picture of jobs creation in the U.S. -- without telling his readers what he was doing. Okrent says Krugman mixed and matched numbers from the two surveys "apparently in order to make a more vivid political point about Bush."

Reading Krugman's column, though, it's hard to see how Okrent concluded this. All the numbers cited in the column appear to be from just one employment measure -- the establishment survey. As Krugman points out in a response to Okrent, he even urged readers to go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site and look up the numbers he used in the column; the numbers are all from the establishment survey.

Many of Okrent's other specific criticisms -- many of which were first brought to him by readers that he says "generally align themselves politically with Prof. Krugman, but feel he does himself and his cause no good when he heeds the roaring approval of his acolytes and dismisses his critics as ideologically motivated" -- seem similarly weak. But that's not to say Okrent is the clear loser in this fight. Okrent's got a gift for the lethal personal attack, and he wields it handily in this fight: "For a man who leads with his chin twice a week, he acts awfully surprised when someone takes a pop at it," Okrent writes of Krugman. Or: "Prof. Krugman would likely be more willing to contribute to the Frist for President campaign than to acknowledge the possibility of error."

Okrent predicts that Krugman won't rest until he gets the last word, and he's right. Krugman, in the final entry, writes that Okrent was dead-wrong on everything, "and now he's not enough of a mensch to admit his error."

To which we just have one thing to add: Dan, you've always seemed like such a mensch to us -- but you're not gonna let an econ nerd get away with that one, are you?

-- Farhad Manjoo

[Brian Olewnick]

Thanks for that pointer, Adam. I forwarded it on to Dan in case he's unaware of it (unlikely) or still interested (unlikelier still!).

[tristano's ghost]

Well, that's rather ironic. The writer seems to say that Krugman's got the facts on his side, but that Okrent has a more enjoyable flair. Yet I thought the job of a public editor was to serve as a fact-based, more objective balance to the idiosyncratic "flair" of the less-reality-beholden (by Okrent's own announced standards) opinion columnists.