NYU's Jay Rosen, writing at his PressThink blog, takes issue with Tim Rutten's L.A. Times Wednesday column dinging the idea of the New York Times public editor.

Editor John Carroll's column to readers after the groping stories, Dean Baquet's speech in New Orleans on the same subject, and now Rutten's column share in putting forward a tough guy tone in big city journalism. I suppose it's in reaction to what is seen as too much coddling of readers, and the threat of cave in to politically motivated critics. To me that is a bad read on the politics of being the press these days. But I do not pretend to understand internal politics at the Los Angeles Times.

Just a snippet. The original post on Rutten's column now includes comments (with a link) by Tim Porter and Matt Welch.