You've been pushing for Op-Ed columnists to run corrections. Has that met with resistance?

I'm going to be addressing this topic in my last column, which will run May 22, so I don't want to scoop myself.

Well, how much resistance did you get from Gail Collins, the editorial page editor?

I have to give you a little prehistory. 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. But [publisher] Arthur Sulzberger decided that I should be able to comment on the editorial pages as well, so it began with Gail being understandably leery: "Who is this person who is going to pass judgment on opinions?"

Then pretty early on in the job, I began to nag a couple of the columnists and Gail about the question of factual errors, or the allegation of factual errors. When I told Gail I was going to write about it, I said, "I want a statement: What's the policy? Why don't you have a policy?" And then she gave me a policy and I quoted from the policy in my column and I ran it in its entirety in my Web journal.

It's a very complicated issue about when is a fact not a fact in the context of opinions. I'll illustrate it: William Safire continued to refer to an al-Qaida's leader's connection to Saddam Hussein. The various government reports said there was no connection. Safire kept writing that there was a connection. Many people challenged him on it. I went to him on it. He said, "I know there's a connection."

Well, who is to say? Just because this report said so doesn't mean that there isn't a connection. He was relying on his sources. Many people thought I was a total wimp for not challenging him and insisting that there be a correction. But if you turn it around, and put it in the context of a Paul Krugman column, when Krugman makes an assertion that he knows to be the case, then in that case the Safire critic would probably defend Krugman. So when is this being motivated by ideology and when is it really being motivated by a quest for accuracy? Those are two different things and so you have to be really careful.

What was the story about Safire's parting words to you?

It's about his welcoming words. Safire is sitting in the chair that you're in now. Arthur brought him in to introduce him to me and he was very friendly. He said, "By the way, feel free to send me any complaints that you get about my column from readers and I will take them in my hand and put them right into the wastebasket." He said it in a very pleasant voice with a smile on his face. I said to him, "Well, I don't want to put you to the trouble of doing that." It was fine. He answered me when there was a factual challenge. He would reply.

In your column "Is the New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?" you answered, "Of course it is." Talking about the Op-Ed page, you said that "you need an awfully heavy counterweight to balance a page that also bears the work of seven opinionated columnists, only two of whom could be classified as conservative." What did you mean?

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. That page is taken to be the Times and therefore is seen by many critics on the right as proof that the Times, in its news columns, is coming from the left. Those are two very different things and I always try to separate them and appraise them on their own.

But I think it's undeniable that the Times is a liberal paper. Gail Collins and Andy Rosenthal, the deputy editor, and I have badinage about it. "Oh, we're too liberal for you again?" Of course it's a liberal editorial policy and a preponderance of liberal columnists.

Can you address the work of the relatively new conservative columnists, David Brooks and John Tierney?

Brooks clearly lines up on the conservative side, but like Safire, he's a libertarian conservative, not an evangelical Christian. On First Amendment issues and a variety of other social issues, both Safire and Brooks, for instance, came out literally in favor of either gay marriage or civil union.

I think Tierney is also more libertarian than he is conservative in the conventional sense. Tierney is an oppositionist. He's a contrarian. And particularly in the atmosphere of the Times, I think he's made a very fine career out of being contrarian. He will write pieces that try to establish why automobile culture is good, why recycling is bad. He picked up Freakanomics for his first or second column because of that contrarian streak. Is he an ideological conservative? I don't know. I knew him before I came to the Times and I know he's a contrarian.

A gadfly?

In the context of that editorial page and that Op-Ed page and the general tone of the newspaper, I think that's an important role to play. It's very different from William Safire, who had a direct line to various Republican White Houses and to Ariel Sharon's home. He was deeply embedded in the ideological conservative community.

You have been on a mission to reduce anonymous quotes in the paper. Will that represent your legacy at the paper?

I hope so, I really hope so. Several days ago there was a briefing by a principal in the government, in which he said, as many principals will, very little. It was mostly cliché, empty and anodyne. Someone on his staff was going to give a background briefing and get into more detail. The reporters objected and the briefers decided, OK forget it. And the readers of those newspapers were deprived of what might have been learned. Now, that's a shame.

However, I think that if the newspapers and broadcast stations stick to their guns, those kinds of incidents will pass. Because those briefers want their story to get out, and if their only way to get the story out is to put it on the record, we will see, in time, their coming around and putting it on the record.

A point you've made in your column is that reporters should think more for themselves. Rather than just go to expert A and B, they should have room for some synthesis to draw on their own expertise.

Right, but there's expertise and then there's inside information. And I think we have to make a distinction. Let's say that you have somebody at the Treasury Department who is going to be briefing on changes in tax policy. It's not his expertise that you care about. You get the expertise from elsewhere. You pull that together as a reporter. But if he's going to tell you what the Treasury Department is going to do, or what the Bush administration is going to do, then that's important stuff.

Except the official is usually spinning you. Normally he's trying to set you up with a plausible scenario, hoping you'll bite on it.

Yes, there's much of that. But that's not all that goes on. Even your most maligned source, the one who wants only to spin, will at times have things to tell you that you want to know.

But, for example, in the case of the Bolton nomination, you definitely have reporters who will call their sources and report, "said one administration official," or "one Republican official." That's an anonymous source speculating on how the fight over the nomination is going to work out.

Right, I hate that. It's terrible. That's the thing that I think should end. You should at the very least indicate as much as you can about the source and what the motivation is. I'd like it to say, "said one Republican source who is carrying the administration's water for the Bolton nomination." Or, "one Democratic source who is doing whatever he can to sabotage Bolton's candidacy." Tell us as much as you can and tell us the motivation.

Sometimes reporters plug in quotes from an anonymous source to show they've made the calls and done their work.

And I think that just showing you've made the calls is a silly convention left over from much of old journalism because it doesn't really show that you've done anything if you have an anonymous source. I find this in reader e-mail over and over again: Readers don't believe it. They think that the reporter either made it up, or has made selections to serve the reporter's own interests. I don't think that's happening most of the time, or nearly most of the time, but if readers think it's happening, then you've got a big problem.

What was your first day on the job like?

God, do I even remember my first day? The first things that I have memories of is that I went to the department heads meeting. It was not unfriendly, but there was an edge. They didn't know me. I didn't know them. I was probably being a little cocky, which I do when I feel that I don't know what I'm talking about. There was a little bit of mutual posturing. 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.

And what do they think of you now?

Well, Phil Taubman, the Washington bureau chief, invited me back this March and said it was time for the exit interview. He told me, and I don't remember the exact words, "We all survived this. We don't think you're a horrible human being." 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.

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