New York Times Ombudsman

Arthur S. Brisbane is the fourth public editor appointed by The Times. The public editor works outside of the reporting and editing structure of the newspaper and receives and answers questions or comments from readers and the public, principally about articles published in the paper. His opinions and conclusions are his own. The most recent of his articles have been written on July 3rd and 9th, and June 26th.

On July 2nd, Brisbane's article is titled "Surrounded by Opinion, the Times Raises Its Voices. Perhaps I've sensationalized, but the introduction last week of Sunday Review, the successor to the venerable Week in Review, marks a decided turn toward more opinion journalism. The now-departed Week in Review offered news analysis, a summary of the news, political cartoons and more in the front of the section -- all assembled and directed by the news department. Opinion pieces from the institutionally separate editorial department filled out the back. Sunday Review, by contrast, is produced by the editorial department, with opinion material now dominant. The news department contributes, edits its own articles and collaborates as the junior partner. With their work mixed for the first time, the editorial and news departments must now work together every week. Response to Sunday Review's first outing was mixed. Noticeably absent were complaints about the increase in opinion pieces. Several Times people have been lured by other news organizations looking to strengthen their opinion offerings, including David Rohde, a Pulitzer Prize winner who is going to Reuters as a columnist. This rising tide of opinion journalism isn't so much a departure as a return to form, observed Nicholas Lemann, Columbia University's journalism dean. Another issue I did not hear about from readers, interestingly, was concern about a breach in the wall between editorial and news, perhaps because the organizational change wasn't immediately evident. Clear labeling of opinion and news was an issue mentioned by readers. While the news articles in the section identified the authors as being from the news side, the Op-Ed columnists were identified only by their underscored names at the top of their work, as is done on the Op-Ed page the rest of the week. Arguably, these offer the sharpest opinions available in American journalism, not to mention a bit of levity to cut the gravity of it all.

Frankly, other than being a bit more confusingly mixed, I don't see a huge difference from the Week in Review. I suppose because I read the paper in full daily, I know the 'brands;' but I do think the layout could be confusing for a casual reader. And I know you'll disagree; but the Times does not need more opinion. Not only do we have the 'official' opinion, the vast majority of news articles, web features, cultural reporting etc. make very clear the 'opinions' of the New York Times. I fear that adding more opinion would just mean more 'profiles' of saintly, deserving illegal immigrants (with no countervailing pieces investigating the possible negatives), more bashing of all Republicans no matter what, propping up of the current president, etc.

On June 25th Brisbane's article is titled "On NYTimes.com, Now You See It, Now You Don't." This article is about The Times' transition from a print-dominated operation to a digital-minded one has progressed at a striking pace, and in the last few months it has closely resembled a full integration of the old ink-stained approach with the purely electronic. Where once The Times's online content was prepared by a separate and subordinate "continuous news" operation, it is now managed by the same people who run print. Now, at The Times, news editors ride herd all day and deep into the night -- steering content to digital platforms and, yes, the daily paper. Unlike print, digital news is often updated throughout the day and night, sometimes many times. In the days after news broke that Arnold Schwarzenegger had fathered a child with his family's housekeeper before becoming California's governor, The Times ran an article about her, describing her neighborhood in Bakersfield. You won't find that article anywhere on NYTimes.com now, though, because later the same day a completely different story, written with a different focus by a different reporter, replaced it online and eventually appeared in the paper. The original article appeared elsewhere, including on the front page of The Press Democrat, a newspaper in Santa Rosa, Calif. The story can still be found on that paper's