AN EXCELLENT BOOK FROM AN EXCELLENT OMBUDSMAN

I am going to recommend, from time to time, a few books that you must read.

Here is the first one.

Daniel Okrent, the first "public editor" of The New York Times is the author of "Public Editor Number One: The Collected Columns (with Reflections, Reconsiderations, and Even a Few Retractions) of the First Ombudsman of The New York Times" , a book that covers his eighteen months as an "ombudsman" that was not liked by the editors and the newsroom, but that did a great job.

Not like the current one that is quite weak.

He said to New York magazine that The New York Times was;

"A ferociously competitive, high-powered place. I had never experienced anything quite like it before. And I guess it was probably a mistake that I made, but my way of dealing with the combativeness of others was to get more combative myself."

Daniel Okrent served as the New York Times' first "Public Editor," a position created following the newspaper's Jayson Blair scandal and the tumultuous reign and resignation of Howell Raines as Executive Editor.

His mission: read the paper and provide his assessments, without guidance from the paper itself and without fear or favor, of how well it executed its responsibility to provide objective, accurate, and complete coverage of the world-at-large.

He did it very well.