Kitchen Toro: FAREWELL, NEW YORK TIMES

After five and a half years, last Friday was my final day The New York Times. I had a wonderful experience at The Times where I learned a lot about journalism by doing various newsroom jobs. I started out answering phones and making copies. Over the years I've written the weather ears on page one and the summaries on page 2, compiled bond information for Bizday and wrote their advertising briefs, I've written wedding announcements for SundayStyle and obituaries for Metro, done stringing work on murders and school-tours, called up prisons and public relation firms. I was fortunate to work at The Times (from 2000-2006) during a fascinating period of the paper's history and in many main sections during interesting news events. I started as a news assistant at the Foreign Desk during the intifada in late 2000, worked on National on election night and during the following craziness, fought to get in to Manhattan on 9/11 to help at Metro and transported equipment and money to Paris to help set up the bureau in Afghanistan during the weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center. While working anywhere at The Times is a terrific learning experience there certainly were highlights.

Above all, the journalistic highlight was working with Daniel Okrent. It was wonderful to be able to use everything I'd learned about how the paper is put out while work ing with The Times's first public editor in constructing the office and inventing the job. We created a system of reading, tracking and investigating reader concerns about Times articles in an effort to make the paper more accountable to its readers, one of the recommendations of the Siegal committtee in the wake of Jayson Blair's fabrications.

During a year and a half we responded to over 56,000 Times readers, and while each response didn't necessarily satisfy every reader I'm proud of our efforts. I'm also confident that our term had a positive effect on the paper. During this period I attended the ONO (Organization of News Ombudsmen) Convention in St. Petersburg, Fla., and also worked with and learned from senior Times editors like Bill Borders and Assistant Managing Editor, Al Siegal, who literally wrote The Times's stylebook. I also worked with and learned a lot from the many bloggers who wrote to us. While it was a terrific experience, it was also a six- to seven-day 10- to 12-hour job and when it came to an end I was ready to move on to other things!

Another highlight of my experience at The Times was being the lead reporter for The Times's Neediest Cases foundation. From mid-October through the beginning of February (2002-2003) and again in the Fall of 2003 I wrote over 60 articles about how donations to The Times's foundation helped New Yorkers in need. More than a few interviews introduced me to the difficulties some people face just trying to make it through the day and taught me a lot about fighting hard for happy endings. Being the lead reporter for the Neediest Cases Foundation also opened up areas of the city I never would have known. Some wonderful people welcomed me into their homes, shared their lifestories and explained their hardships. I tried my best to be true to them and am very grateful.

Without question, the most unqualified fun I had at The Times was during the last five months working as the news assistant in the Dining section. I was the fact-checker for Florence Fabricant and went through her Calendar, Off the Menu, and Stuff columns. I also did research for Times restaurant critic, Frank Bruni, assisted editors in editing the new food and wine blogs and monitored reader posts. I was even able to use my pagination skills learned in other sections to occasionally do layout in Dining. I learned a tremendous amount about food from the reporters and editors in the section and I'm very grateful to them. I don't think you could plan a better situation for someone interested in both food and food-writing.

As wonderful as the last five months have been I've moved on to Level 3 at school and I'm interested in focusing on my final project and coming up with its menu. Also, since creating this blog a few months ago and dedicating an increasing amount of time to it I've decided that I'm ready to pursue it on a full-time basis for a while, at least through the next few months of summer until I'm ready to take a job at a restaurant.