Top 23 Quotes & Sayings by Daniel Okrent

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American editor Daniel Okrent.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
Daniel Okrent

Daniel Okrent is an American writer and editor. He is best known for having served as the first public editor of The New York Times newspaper, inventing Rotisserie League Baseball, and for writing several books. In November 2011, Last Call won the Albert J. Beveridge prize, awarded by the American Historical Association to the year's best book of American history. His most recent book, published May 2019, is The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America.

If there had been three public editors before me, the body might have absorbed it a little bit better.
Is the New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is.
I'm afraid we'll see reporters stop chasing quotes around the same time dogs stop chasing cars. — © Daniel Okrent
I'm afraid we'll see reporters stop chasing quotes around the same time dogs stop chasing cars.
I think it's one of the Times' problems that they haven't made it clear to readers what various formats mean.
The Times' new credibility committee report that was issued on Monday very specifically said they will be putting in a policy that reporters must get permission from their department heads to appear on television, which I think is a really good thing.
That the Op-Ed page is very important in readers' and the nation's perception of the Times, the perception of its editorial positions, and of its implicit editorial positions as expressed by the publisher's choice of people who are given the freedom to write opinion columns.
I was probably being a little cocky, which I do when I feel that I don't know what I'm talking about.
Now I worry. If people ended up liking me, did I do the job wrong? So I decided they didn't end up liking me - they ended up being able to deal with me.
I think on civilian casualties they could do more. It's actually something I've discussed with the editors involved. They're aware of it, and I'm hopeful that there will be more reporting on that.
Gail didn't want me commenting on the opinion pages. I was hired by the news department and, despite the rabid assertions of the Times' enemies and detractors, the two really have nothing to do with each other.
I know there are reporters who ridicule pundits.
But I think it's undeniable that the Times is a liberal paper.
If you really hate George Bush, you don't want to read about his hobbies or that he's nice to his friends or that he's good company at dinner.
I'm saying that the WMD reporting was not consciously evil. It was bad journalism, even very bad journalism.
It's a very complicated issue about when is a fact not a fact in the context of opinions.
That first week, I also went to Washington. That was really tough. I sympathize with those Washington figures who have to face 40 Times Washington bureau reporters. They ask hard questions and they're relentless. And they were quite suspicious and quite dubious about me.
I believe the Times is a great newspaper, but a profoundly fallible one.
Right, but there's expertise and then there's inside information. And I think we have to make a distinction.
I think Tierney is also more libertarian than he is conservative in the conventional sense.
The pursuit of balance can create imbalance because sometimes something is true. — © Daniel Okrent
The pursuit of balance can create imbalance because sometimes something is true.
Closing one's ears to the complaints of partisans would also entail closing one's mind to the substance of their arguments.
Baseball is a pretty sight and a nice experience, win or lose, particularly if it is watched in a nice park.
If you can't enjoy the game unless you are pretty sure your team is going to win, baseball is not the game for you. Remember, the best team in baseball in any year is going to be beaten about 60 times.
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