metro
I like this guy... he actually does his job... (Thought I heard that the NYX was, shockingly, getting rid of his position.)

NY Times public editor Byron Calame honored for critical columns

APR 3, 2007 2:00 PM EDT

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) -- New York Times public editor Byron Calame's series of columns examining how the newspaper's reporters and editors did their jobs earned the veteran journalist the Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism from Penn State University's College of Communications.

Among Calame's award-winning columns was a piece on Jan. 1, 2006, which reported that Times executive editor Bill Keller and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. refused to answer Calame's questions about the content and timing of a December 2005 story about eavesdropping conducted by the National Security Agency.

"He demands a level of decision-making transparency that the Times leaders demand of government leaders," Steve Geimann, a radio producer for Bloomberg News and a former president of the Society of Professional Journalists, said about Calame's columns.

Calame began his two-year term as public editor in May 2005. The position serves an ombudsman-type role at the newspaper.

He spent decades at the Wall Street Journal before retiring as deputy managing editor in 2004.

The award announced Wednesday will be presented May 24 at the National Press Club in Washington.