Danny Okrent of the New York Times Jumps the Shark (Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?)

Danny Okrent writes:

13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did - New York Times: 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.... [S]ome 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...

May one ask Danny Okrent for an example? He doesn't give one. I was taught in middle school English that the first requirement was to support one's points with examples.

Comments

[trostky]

Hmmm ... while making 13 points in one column, the argumentation will suffer.

[anne]

Happily, Danny Okrent is as of this day leaving the New York Times. Since he was supposed to have been our representative, I should like to say he most certainly has never been my representative and I could not be more pleased that he is gone. The attack on Paul Krugman was only part of the gratitutious distasteful attacks on New York Times writers and editors.

[ot]

I'm not going to try to guess what's in Okrent's mind concerning Krugman, and without any examples, it looks like a cheap smear of the paper's best columnist.

Okrent seems to have left out of his critique any mention of the paper's writer with the most extensive and obvious record of shaping and distorting information, David Brooks.

[Jennifer]

Agreed, Paul Krugman is an exceptional columnist, painstaking, precise, clear and courageous.

[ihateemo]

..and Okrent is a hack. QED.

[PaulC]

obvious record of shaping and distorting information, David Brooks.

Doesn't "shaping and distorting" require starting out with some information? My working assumption was the Brooks begins his day by brushing his teeth (he's not all bad) and in the course of his dental hygiene has thoughts like "I bet there are little podunk towns in Western Pennsylvania where you'd have trouble finding a restaurant with a $20 entree. Heh, that would make a great column..."

[PaulC]

> I was taught in middle school English that the first requirement was to support one's points with examples.

As noted in a previous thread, our president believes that one learns the basics of English usage and grammar in college. Maybe there's a parallel education system that I've been unaware of my whole life.

[norbizness]

Just missed the cut:

14. I love John Tierney! He's barely thinking outside of the really tiny box that David Brooks built!

15. As for the countless readers who told me to make like a penalty-killing hockey player and get the puck out of here, well, I will. You big meanies.

[Jonathan Goldberg]

Even had Krugman been guilty of this, which I do not for a moment concede, he has been conspicuously right on such important issues as the California energy market, Bush's radicalism (remember when he was expected to govern as a moderate?), Social Security, health care, tax policy, etc. What corresponding achievments do any of the other columnists mentioned, let alone the unmentioned (unmentionable?) Brooks, have to their credit?

He's worth more than all the other Times columnists combined, which Okrent himself thrown in.

[Ben Brackley]

Okrent provides absolutely no examples to support his claim about Krugman's "habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers."

I can only imagine that this claim is based merely on Okrent's sense (without much understanding of the relative merits of any numerical dispute) that things can't be as bad or one-sided as Krugman claims. In Okrent's mind, the only explanation is that Krugman must be ideological and unfair.

Unfortunately, Daniel, things really are that bad. And, until the Bush Administration came along, Krugman was an equal opportunity abuser of bad ideas by Democrats as well as Republicans.

The one consistency in Krugman's public career is that he does not suffer fools easily. And it is surely not Krugman's fault that we are now governed by such fools.

[Macneil]

It's very funny when the Right tries to discredit Krugman: most of the time, they can only do it with lies and distortions. But that's usually enough for someone who wants to disagree with Krugman to say "ok, so it isn't true!" People who don't know much at all about economics can easily be lead astray. Even Arnold Kling's anti-Krugman articles are pathetic.

[Auros]

And yet, Remo, it remains true that my generation is exposed to considerably more risk of sliding from the middle class into poverty, than was my parents' generation.

[liberal]

remo williams wrote, "He is now Political Paul, which from my vantage point isn't such a problem, but I prefered his more careful style."

Yeah, well, as he pointed out in his introduction to _The Great Unraveling_, we're now faced with a revolutionary power (the right wingers running the country), and the time for namby-pampy measures is over.

[anne]

Economics is really political economics, no matter are wish that it be otherwise. Paul Krugman is honest and open and courageous through times when we can be too timid. Also, the writing is a wonder of clarity. Even when we do not agree with such a thinker, we gain in the necessary argument. Similarly with Brad :)

[Unstable Isotope]

Okrent calls out Krugman and Dowd, but is silent on Brooks, Tierney and Safire? What distorted and selective numbers has Krugman used?

[howard]

Here's the letter to the editor i wrote:

"That Daniel Okrent's stint as "public editor" was a joke became clear the week he decided that the Tonys and the presidential election were equally important topics. Since then, i haven't bothered to read a man so simple-minded.

But since he was leaving, i wondered if he had learned anything.

In fact, his remarks on Paul krugman today demonstrate that he has become stupider over time. The idea that Krugman cheats with the numbers - the basic meaning of Okrent's witless remarks - is absurd. The idea that if we're going to start talking about holding op-ed writers to higher standards we start with Krugman and not with Safire or Tierney or Kristoff of Brooks is despicable beyond comment.

The idea that Okrent was paid to produce this piffle and pablum is nauseating.

And the idea that i will pay good money to read idiots like tierney or kirstoff or brooks just so that i can read someone intelligent like krugman is worthy of someone as pathetic as Okrent, even though it wasn't his.

I am disgusted: good riddance to bad rubbish indeed."

PS. Remo, iirc, krugman hedged those remraks about 9/11 and enron pretty carefully: he wasn't just cavalier about it....

[Bob H]

Yes, that is the surprising thing about Krugman. There never has been a substantial challenge to him. Krugman understands the dangers of intellectual filtering, and does not engage in it.

[jml]

Responses to Remo Williams:
"His attack against the Bush deficits seem a little odd considering he wrote in Peddling Prosperity that the federal deficit at about the same size under Reagan had little impact on US economic growth."
This is because Reagoan changed course and increased taxes to be more in fiscal balance with realistic expectations of future spending, so damaging long term fiscal imbalance did not occur. This contrasts to the current admin's efforts to lock tax reductions in permanently (tax reductions that will continue to be out of fiscal balance with realistic expectations of future spending control for a decade or more)

"The difference? SS for the baby boomers."
Reducing national debt is important for baby boomers mostly in order to change funding mechanism from pay-as-you-go to pre-funding, OR to pay back money borrowed from trust fund -most of which has been borrowed by current admin.. Current admin is going in opposite direction, and this is the problem. You seem to be implying the baby boomer SS is a crisis that is causing the US deficit and increase in debt -but it is the other way around.

"DeLong says the same thing."
I don't think you understand what Krugman or DeLong are saying.

"Yet this predicting seems overly political when he harps impending doom for a couple of years yet then calmiy says at Berkley during a Q and A that the Day of Reckoning could be 15 to 20 years off."
OK, there is some ambiguity here, but my reading of what Krugman is saying is that the impending doom is the permanent lock-in of irresponsible tax reductions. Fiscal day of reckoning could be 5, 10, 20 years off -depends on what Japan, China, private investors, want to do re purchases from US Treasury.
If the US makes a difficult to reverse commitment to continue digging a deep fiscal hole, then one should be concerned, and the first advice would be to quit digging, and don’t commit yourself to keep digging. What is so puzzling about that? Economics is lousy about predicting the timing of turning points, but much better at predicting a turning point has to occur sooner or later, and consequences of current policies following the turn. Most economists are aware of this. Consider Krugman's Road Runner metaphor -Wiley Coyote thinks he is fine for the first 20 or 30 feet after he runs off a cliff. Then he looks down.

I agree with other comments that Krugman has a better record predicting economic events than anyone else on the NY Times page. Read some of his old columns and papers, going back to before the stock crash. And look at Tierney! In a recent column, he praises Chile’s privatization scheme based on the long-term expectations of one investor. I think there was one number in that article -what this fellow *expected* the Chilean stock market returns to be over the next 20 years, based on a vaguely described historical *average return* and this fellow felt that would continue for as long as he needed to in order to get a nice retirment nest egg from the market. For goodness sake, talk about selective and politically slanted number quoting.

Anyone who read Krugman in the 90s would find the idea ridiculous that he is some sort of leftwing ideologue

[JR]

Okrent left the world of decent discourse when he attacked a reader by name in print. He's the lowest of the low- a preening coward who uses the power of the Times to attack the defenceless and suck up to the powerful.

[nick]

Okrent's parting snark was best proof, beyond his self-admitted sucking-up to Safire, that he was utterly unqualified for the job. I'd compare it to a spoilt child picking up the ball and stomping off, shrieking 'I HATE YOU ALL!!', except that it'd be overly harsh on the spoilt child.

I do hope that the new public editor will devote some space to that particular piece, and note that it didn't meet the quality threshold required of the NYT. The irony would be delicious.

[Tim B.]

Okrent will not be missed whatsoever. And, sadly, neither will the Times until it recreates itself into strongly adversarial entity investigating crimes and corruption in the government, corporations and the media itself.

Let's hope his replacement can make better use of the office.

[BroD]

On a 100-point scale of significance, Okrent's comments rate somewhere around .075 but the cluelessness they reveal is stunning.

It's as if a sports writer had written "Ted Williams has the disturbing habit of carefully selecting the pitches he will swing at in a fashion which may please Red Sox fans
but which supporters of opposing teams find extremely vexing."

[Ginger Yellow]

You're all being far too harsh on Okrent here. Clearly it's a piss-take of the NYT's habit of running articles saying "even Democrats agree..." without naming a single Democrat (and vice versa for Republicans). Somerby has tons of examples of this.

[Dick (no, not that one)]

Let's see, Okrent, who obviously doesn't understand all those numbers thingies, also was the guy who thought that Judith Miller's cheerleading to war was maybe just a little bit sloppy. Yes, he is the voice of (in)credibility.

[walons]

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2005/03/happy_anniversa.html

I know "The Age of Diminished Expecations" has nothing to do with the NYT columns, but I can't forget it forecasted lower US productivity growth just about the time when it took off.

[John]

Also what BroD said.