Arthur S. Brisbane became The Times’s fourth public editor on June 21, 2010. He succeeded Clark Hoyt, who had held the position for three years. The first was Daniel Okrent, named in 2003, and the second was Byron E. Calame, named in 2005.
The Public Editor
Earl Wilson/The New York Times
As the readers' representative, Mr. Brisbane responds to complaints and comments from the public and monitors the paper's journalistic practices.
(For more information, please go to a news article about The Times's appointment of Mr. Brisbane.)
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Mr. Brisbane, 59, is the fourth public editor appointed by The Times. The public editor works outside of the reporting and editing structure of the newspaper and receives and answers questions or comments from readers and the public, principally about articles and other content published in the paper and online. At least twice a month, Mr. Brisbane will write a column about The Times's journalistic practices and current journalistic issues in general. His column will run in the Week in Review section.
Mr. Brisbane got his first job in journalism in 1976 as a reporter at the Glen Cove Guardian, a small weekly newspaper in Glen Cove, N.Y. A year later he joined the staff of the Kansas City Times as a reporter and, in 1979, became a columnist writing four times a week about life in the city.
In 1984, he moved to the Washington Post where he covered Marion Barry, mayor of the District of Columbia, before becoming an assistant city editor and then a National reporter. Mr. Brisbane returned to Kansas City in 1990 to write a column for The Kansas City Star. He was appointed editor of the newspaper in 1992 and, five years later, became its publisher.
In 2005, Knight Ridder, then the nation's second largest newspaper company and owner of The Star, named him senior vice president with responsibility for overseeing the operations of its papers in Philadelphia, Kansas City, Fort Worth, Charlotte and others. He is a graduate of Harvard College.
