Okrent on Baseball and Ombudsmanship

By: Joe Strupp The New York Times' new public editor's previous claims to fame include inventing the first Rotisserie fantasy baseball league. But Daniel Okrent tried to avoid comparing the management of a newspaper to that of a baseball team when prodded by a reporter. After some pushing, he admitted one obvious similarity: "You either pull the editor after a few innings, or you let him finish the game."

Okrent's hiring, which includes an 18-month trial period as the paper's first-ever ombudsman-style editor, comes just months after Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. yanked former Executive Editor Howell Raines out of the game quickly following the Jayson Blair scandal, going to the bullpen for reliever Bill Keller. Among Keller's moves was to sign free agent Okrent for the current season.

With decades of news experience, but little involving newspapers, Okrent touts his limited newspaper background as a positive in the new position, which he will begin Dec. 1 and which includes the writing of a bi-weekly column on newspaper issues for the paper's "The Week In Review" section. "It is a little premature to know exactly what I will write about," Okrent said. "My guess is it will be one topic at a time."

Okrent has said he will not be writing memos to staffers as some other ombudsmen do, but instead make his views known in the columns. But he plans to solicit input from both staffers and readers about newspaper issues. "I will have my say, but I don't want to be in a position of directly addressing the person in the newsroom," he told E&P Online. "My job is not to give instruction."

At 55, he's spent more than 25 years in magazine and book publishing. From 1999 to 2001 he was an editor at large for Time Inc. and from 1996 to1999 he was the company's editor of new media. He also was assistant managing editor and managing editor for Life magazine and founding editor of New England Monthly. Other posts include columnist for Esquire, publishing consultant to Texas Monthly Inc. and editor in chief of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Declining to comment on how the paper was run prior to and during the Blair scandal, Okrent said he believed today's Times management has learned from past mistakes and is in a position to put forth the best paper possible. Whether that means he will ever be dropped from the roster, or re-signed when this contract is up, is yet to come. "Ask me in a few months how it is going," he said. "I may have more to say then."