Okrent begins a blog of sorts

Daniel Okrent, the New York Times' public editor (pictured), has begun a quasi-blog in which he posts periodic comments and responses to reader emails and phone calls.

And CyberJournalist.net's Jon Dube interviews NYTimes.com Editor in Chief Len Apcar about the Times' campaign trail unblog.

Steve Outing also interviewed Apcar, and writes at E-Media Tidbits:

I had a conversation with Apcar yesterday (for a column I'm writing), and he made some interesting comments about blogging at the Times. First, he acknowledged that the freewheeling nature of blogging makes highly edited publications like the Times "very uncomfortable." The experiments above are blog-like, but he hesitates to outright call Okrent's reader-interaction feature, for example, a "blog." There's still much oversight and editing involved. Apcar did say that he can foresee the day when, as an example, a Times science writer might blog under the Times banner. Some writers at the paper indeed want to do this, and to communicate more directly with readers. "I'm open to this," he says, but it hasn't been made a high priority yet.