This longtime reader (and past Detroit News colleague) cheers this relaunch, Charles. Welcome back!

As a lifelong NYT reader, it’s also sad to see you echo Paul Krugman’s similar comments here eight months ago about his exodus. “It was not a happy departure,” he posted at The Contrarian [below].

My relationship with the Times had degenerated to a point where I couldn’t stay.

What you call “the zombie thing that came to be published under my name,” he described as discomfort “that my byline was being used to create a storyline that was no longer mine.” Krugman elaborated about a shift you also apparently experienced:

In 2024, the editing of my regular columns went from light touch to extremely intrusive. I went from one level of editing to three, with an immediate editor and his superior both weighing in on the column, and sometimes doing substantial rewrites before it went to copy. These rewrites almost invariably involved toning down, introducing unnecessary qualifiers, and, as I saw it, false equivalence. I would rewrite the rewrites to restore the essence of my original argument. But . . . the end result of the back and forth often felt flat and colorless. . . .

I felt that my byline was being used to create a storyline that was no longer mine. So I left.

Hope this new journey is as restorative as the Baldwin review editing process.