Most of his career has been spent as an editor, at such places as
Alfred A. Knopf;
Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich;
Esquire Magazine;
New England Monthly;
Life Magazine; and
Time, Inc. 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 the first
public editor for
The New York Times, following the
Jayson Blair scandal of falsified reporting. 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. It opened at the
Westside Theatre in Manhattan on May 20, 2012. From 2003–2008, Okrent served as 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.
The Death of Print ? In the late 1990s, as editor of new media at
Time Inc., Okrent wrote about the future of magazine publishing. He believed that the advancement of digital technologies would make it easier for people to read newspapers, magazines and books online. 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. He told his audience:
Okrent's law During an interview after being appointed as the first public news editor of
The New York Times, Okrent said, "The pursuit of balance can create imbalance because sometimes something is true." In what has become known as "Okrent's law", he was referring to the phenomenon of the press providing legitimacy to unsupported fringe viewpoints in an
effort to appear even-handed.{{cite web ==Baseball==