NYT public editor Daniel Okrent was on a fixed-term contract, and his time is nigh. He looks back on his job in an interview with Salon.

An excerpt (free with a day pass):

The Times took a lot of heat about the "White House Letter" articles by White House correspondent Elizabeth Bumiller. In one, she seemed to fawn over White House communications director Nicolle Devenish. In another, she wrote about Bush loving baseball. Why the uproar?

What was interesting was, the criticism was from both sides. Bumiller could write a paragraph that would make the Bushies flip out. "How could this person be so disrespectful of our president?" And in the same paragraph -- because it was not in the context of issues but of his personality or his hobbies -- the anti-Bushies would be screaming, "How can you publish such tripe by someone who is so clearly in the Bush administration's pocket?" It was ridiculous. Maybe there were things to criticize, but these two different comments displayed more about our culture and a lack of understanding of what that columnist meant to do. I think it's one of the Times' problems that they haven't made it clear to readers what various formats mean.

You wrote, "As for 'White House Letter,' it's part of a longstanding Times' practice of trying to provide a glimpse into the personal side of newsmakers' lives. I do think the paper could do a better job of labeling these pieces and making clear that they are not about, nor meant to be about, life-and-death issues."

I'm not so sure I should have included that last line, because those articles can be substantive. But it's about the individual reader. 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.

Or what he has on his iPod.

It just drives people who don't like him crazy. It would have been the same if there had been a "White House Letter" about Clinton 10 years ago. It's a misapprehension, I think, of the varied roles that a newspaper has. Now if that were the only coverage of Bush, yeah, sure.

In "Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction?" you wrote: "To anyone who read the paper between September 2002 and June 2003, the impression that Saddam Hussein possessed, or was acquiring, a frightening arsenal of W.M.D. seemed unmistakable. Except, of course, it appears to have been mistaken." Do you think that the Times' prewar reporting on WMD could prove to be a longer-term embarrassment to the paper than the Jayson Blair scandal?

I don't know if I could speak to comparative sins. It certainly was a very serious case of bad journalism. It was not, to the best of my ability to determine, a case of "I know we're lying as I write this," which Jayson Blair was. Here was a guy consciously plagiarizing. Here was a guy who meant to break the rules. The Times did a lousy job on WMD, but I can't imagine there was anybody in the office saying, "Let's make up some things."

But an argument can be made that the paper's WMD reporting helped lead the country into war.

I'm not saying it's not a significant issue. I'm saying that the WMD reporting was not consciously evil. It was bad journalism, even very bad journalism.

In that column, you raised questions about Judith Miller, who wrote the controversial WMD stories, and other reporters, noting that they relied on unnamed sources, which can amount to "a license granted to liars." You continued: "The contract between a reporter and an unnamed source -- the offer of information in return for anonymity -- is properly a binding one. But I believe that a source who turns out to have lied has breached that contract, and can fairly be exposed." Do you think the Times made a mistake in not disciplining Miller?

I don't know that one can say she wasn't disciplined. They don't reveal personnel matters to me. For all I know, she was disciplined. For all anyone knows, she was disciplined. Only Judith Miller and Times management know for sure.

You wrote: "The editors' note to readers will have served its apparent function only if it launches a new round ... of aggressively reported stories detailing the misinformation, disinformation and suspect analysis that led virtually the entire world to believe Hussein had W.M.D. at his disposal." A year later, do you think the Times follow-up reporting has been up to that standard?

There was one really good long piece by Michael Gordon. But I don't think it was enough. I think they could have done more.