Daniel Okrent
Daniel Okrent (born April 2, 1948) is an American writer and
Early life and education
Born to a Jewish family[3] in Detroit, Michigan, Okrent graduated from Cass Technical High School in Detroit[4] in 1965 and from the University of Michigan, where he worked on the university's student newspaper The Michigan Daily.[citation needed]
Career
Most of his career has been spent as an editor, at such places as
His book Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center (Viking, 2003) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History.
In October 2003, Okrent was named public editor for The New York Times following the Jayson Blair scandal. He held this position until May 2005.
Okrent and Peter Gethers, having acquired the theatrical rights to the site and name of the web series Old Jews Telling Jokes, co-wrote and co-produced a revue of that name.[5] It opened at the Westside Theatre in Manhattan on May 20, 2012.
From 2003-2008, he was chairman of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. He has been awarded honorary degrees by the University of Michigan and the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
Since 2017, Okrent has been listed on the Advisory Board of the Secular Coalition for America.[6]
Okrent's law
Okrent formulated what has become known as "Okrent's law" in an interview comment he made about his new job. It states: "The pursuit of balance can create imbalance because sometimes something is true", referring to the phenomenon of the press providing legitimacy to unsupported fringe viewpoints in an effort to appear even-handed.[7][8][9][10]
Baseball
Okrent invented
Okrent is also credited with inventing the baseball stat, WHIP.[13] At the time he referred to it as IPRAT, signifying "Innings Pitched Ratio".
In May 1981, Okrent wrote and Sports Illustrated published "He Does It by the Numbers".[14] This profile of the then-unknown Bill James launched James's career as baseball's foremost analyst.[15]
In 1994, Okrent was filmed for his in-depth knowledge of baseball history for the Ken Burns documentary Baseball.[16] During the nine-part series, a red-sweater-wearing Okrent delivered a detailed analysis of the cultural aspects of the national pastime, including a comparison of the dramatic Game 6 of the 1975 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and Cincinnati Reds to the conflict and character development in Russian novels.
The death of print
In the late 1990s, as editor of new media at Time Inc., Okrent wrote about the future of magazine publishing.[17] He believed that the advancement of digital technologies would make it easier for people to read newspapers, magazines and books online.[18] In late 1999, Okrent made a prediction about the future of print media in the Hearst New Media Lecture at the Graduate School of Journalism of Columbia University.[17] He told his audience:
I believe they, and all forms of print, are dead. Finished. Over. Perhaps not in my professional lifetime, but certainly in that of the youngest people in this room. Remove the question mark from the title of this talk. The Death of Print, full stop.[19]
Personal life
Okrent has participated in LearnedLeague under the name "OkrentD".[20][21] He is the uncle of American linguist Arika Okrent.
Bibliography
- The Ultimate Baseball Book (co-editor, with Harris Lewine) (1979)
- Nine Innings: The Anatomy of Baseball as Seen Through the Playing of a Single Game (1985)
- Baseball Anecdotes (co-author, with Steve Wulf) (1987)
- The Way We Were: New England Then, New England Now (1988)
- Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center (2003)
- Public Editor #1 (2006)
- Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (2010)
- The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America (2019)
Filmography
- Baseball (1994), (2010) | Documentary | Directed by: Ken Burns
- Sweet And Lowdown (1999) | Role of: A.J. Pickman | Comedy-Drama | Directed by: Woody Allen
- Wordplay (2006) | Documentary | Directed by: Patrick Creadon
- The Hoax (2007) | Role of: Real Publisher #1 | Comedy-Drama | Directed by: Lasse Hallström
- Silly Little Game(2010) | Documentary | Directed by: Lucas Jansen and Adam Kurland
- Prohibition (2011) | Documentary | Directed by: Ken Burns
See also
References
- The Times-Picayune. Retrieved April 24, 2011.
- ^ Gross, Terry (May 8, 2019). "Eugenics, anti-immigration laws of the past still resonate today, journalist says". Fresh Air. NPR.
- ^ Okrent, Daniel (April 29, 2012). "Kvelling in Their Seats - A first-time producer on what it took to stage Old Jews Telling Jokes". New York.
- ^ "Getting the 'Lowdown'". Entertainment Weekly. January 7, 2000. Archived from the original on October 22, 2012. Retrieved September 21, 2011.
- ^ Okrent, Daniel. "Kvelling in Their Seats". New York Magazine. New York Magazine. Retrieved December 25, 2016.
- ^ "Board". secular.org. Secular Coalition for America. Archived from the original on January 4, 2017. Retrieved October 29, 2018.
- ^ Pearlman, Jeff (October 11, 2012). "Daniel Okrent". Jeff Pearlman. Jeff Pearlman. Archived from the original on January 6, 2013. Retrieved August 8, 2014.
- ^ "The New Yorker". Issues 1–10. 80. F-R Publishing Corporation. May 24, 2004: 244.
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(help) - ISBN 9780345522450.
- OCLC 702357541. Retrieved August 8, 2014.
- ^ "Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame". fsta.org. February 17, 2019.
- ^ "30 for 30". ESPN. Retrieved April 27, 2015.
- ^ Di Fino, Nando (August 3, 2009). "Dan Okrent Invented WHIP Statistic, Fantasy Baseball". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved December 24, 2017.
- ^ Okrent, Daniel (May 25, 1981). "He Does It By The Numbers". sportsillustrated.cnn.com. Sports Illustrated. Archived from the original on August 13, 2009. Retrieved December 24, 2017.
- OCLC 305422137.
- ^ "Dan Okrent: The Origins of Rotisserie Baseball – The Tenth Inning". pbs.org. Retrieved December 24, 2017.
- ^ . Retrieved April 25, 2016.
- ISBN 9780761932284.
- ^ Okrent, Dan (February 2000). "The Death of Print?". digitaljournalist.org. Retrieved April 25, 2016.
- ^ "LL Profile: OkrentD". LearnedLeague. Retrieved October 16, 2014.
- ^ Kushner, Adam B. (August 20, 2014). "The coolest, weirdest Internet community you'll never be able to join". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 24, 2017.
External links
- Daniel Okrent at IMDb
- Daniel Okrent at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
- Library of Economics and Liberty.
- Appearances on C-SPAN