I keep on file a copy of my letter to the New York Times’ Public Editor, published Jan. 16, 2005, @ http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9406E1D91538F935A25752C0A9639C8B63

I keep it for what I (forgive my immodesty) believe is my prescience in playing a modern-day Cassandra for the Sulzberger clan:

” You say, ‘If you haven’t been seeing tons of corrections on the page it may be for the best of reasons: judging by the shrinking volume of complaints I receive from readers, columnists’ errors have become much less frequent.’

Surely you don’t really believe this. Perhaps it is merely wishful thinking on your part, and not outright delusion. I suspect that your complaining public, having regularly found the most obvious and outrageous bias, have simply abandoned complaints as futile.

Does no one at The Times grasp the sea change that now swirls around it?”

I like to bring it out with every Times’ quarterly financial statement, just for the smile.