Byron Calame

Byron "Barney" Calame (born April 14, 1939 in Appleton City, Missouri) is an American journalist. He worked at the Wall Street Journal for 39 years, retiring as deputy managing editor in 2004. In 2005, he became the second public editor of the New York Times for a fixed two-year term.

Calame earned a bachelor's degree in journalism at the University of Missouri in 1961 and was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters honorary degree in 2011. He received a master's degree in political science at the University of Maryland in 1966. He served as an officer in the U.S. Navy from 1961 to 1965.

Calame joined the Journal in 1965 and served as a reporter, bureau chief and editor before being named the deputy managing editor in 1992. "As deputy managing editor since 1992, Barney has run the entire paper in my absence and much of it in my presence", Paul Steiger, then the Journal managing editor, said in announcing Calame's retirement at the end of 2004. His responsibilities as deputy managing editor included maintaining the paper's ethical and journalistic standards, and he was "widely regarded as the conscience of the paper". His role outside the Journal newsroom, however, was seldom a highly visible one.

His work at the Journal was recognized by several awards. He received the 2005 Gerald Loeb Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2005 New York Financial Writers’ Association Elliott V. Bell Award, and the 2002 Society of American Business Editors and Writers Distinguished Achievement Award.

Invited to become the Times public editor two months after retiring from the Journal, Calame succeeded Daniel Okrent in the ombudsman-like position and was followed by Clark Hoyt. His focus on the nuts-and-bolts of newspapering and journalistic ethics drew sharp criticism, and some observers complained that he pulled his punches and was too restrained in criticizing the newspaper and its staff.

Jack Shafer, then the media critic for Slate, declared in a May 2006 commentary that Calame’s first year as public editor had been "dreadful". He complained "Calame possesses a mandate that would allow him to boil the journalistic ocean if he so desired, but he usually elects to merely warm a teapot for his readers and pour out thimblefuls of weak chamomile".

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