Personal life and Professional career

Clark Hoyt is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 who was the public editor

Ombudsman

An ombudsman is a person who acts as a trusted intermediary between an organization and some internal or external constituency while representing not only but mostly the broad scope of constituent interests...

 of the New York Times, serving as the "readers' representative." He was the newspaper's third public editor, or ombudsman, after Daniel Okrent

Daniel Okrent

Daniel Okrent is an American writer and editor. He is best known for having served as the first public editor of The New York Times newspaper, for inventing Rotisserie League Baseball, and for writing several books, most recently Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.-Education and...

 and Byron Calame

Byron Calame

Byron Calame was the second public editor of the New York Times. He succeeded Daniel Okrent in this ombudsman-like position in 2005, and was followed by Clark Hoyt...

. His initial two-year term began on May 14, 2007, and was later extended for another year, expiring in June 2010.

Hoyt is a member of The Hill School

The Hill School

The Hill School is a preparatory boarding school for boys and girls located in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, about 35 miles northwest of Philadelphia....

 class of 1960 and a 1964 graduate of Columbia College of Columbia University

Columbia College of Columbia University

Columbia College is the oldest undergraduate college at Columbia University, situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1754 by the Church of England as King's College, receiving a Royal Charter from King George II...

. Hoyt began his journalism career in 1966 at The Ledger

The Ledger

The Ledger is a daily newspaper serving Lakeland, Florida and the Polk County area. It is owned by The New York Times Company. Jerome Ferson became publisher of the newspaper on July 30, 2007....

. Shortly afterwards in 1968 he joined the American media company Knight Ridder

Knight Ridder

Knight Ridder was an American media company, specializing in newspaper and Internet publishing. Until it was bought by The McClatchy Company on June 27, 2006, it was the second-largest newspaper publisher in the United States, with 32 daily newspapers sold.- History :The corporate ancestors of...

, where he was deployed to work at the Detroit Free Press

Detroit Free Press

The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, USA. The Sunday edition is entitled the Sunday Free Press. It is sometimes informally referred to as the "Freep"...

as a general reporter, before progressing to become a political reporter. Indeed, Hoyt would spend most of his journalism career at Knight Ridder—except for a stint at The Miami Herald

The Miami Herald

The Miami Herald is a daily newspaper owned by The McClatchy Company headquartered on Biscayne Bay in the Omni district of Downtown Miami, Florida, United States...

as a Washington Correspondent during the 70's—until its sale to The McClatchy Company

The McClatchy Company

The McClatchy Company is a publicly traded American publishing company based in Sacramento, California. It operates 30 daily newspapers in 15 states and has an average weekday circulation of 2.2 million and Sunday circulation of 2.8 million...

 in 2006.

During the 1980s and mid-2000s, upon Hoyt's return to Knight Ridder, he filled numerous positions within the company, including business editor, managing editor, Washington news editor, and chief of the Washington bureau. Hoyt also served as Vice President of News for Knight Ridder from 1993-99.

Hoyt is also a joint 1973 Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

 winner; a prize he shares with fellow journalist Robert Boyd (journalist) for their coverage of the Democratic vice presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton

Thomas Eagleton

Thomas Francis Eagleton was a United States Senator from Missouri, serving from 1968–1987. He is best remembered for briefly being the Democratic vice presidential nominee under George McGovern in 1972...

, and their uncovering of the electric shock treatment and powerful anti-psychotics used to treat Eagleton’s ongoing mental health problems regarding his manic depression, which Eagleton tried to keep secret from the Democratic

Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 presidential nominee George McGovern

George McGovern

George Stanley McGovern is an historian, author, and former U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party nominee in the 1972 presidential election....

and the press.

Departure from the New York Times

On June 12, 2010 in his final analysis of his three year tenure as the New York Times public editor Hoyt said,

For the past three years, my assignment has been to try to help this newspaper live up to its own high journalistic standards as it covered a historic presidential election, two wars, the Great Recession, violence in the Middle East and more. I have deplored the overuse of anonymous sources, warned against the creep of opinion into news analysis and worried about the preservation of Times quality on the Internet. But, in truth, I have sometimes felt less like a keeper of the flame and more like an internal affairs cop.

Further, upon commenting about the New York Times continual accusations of liberal bias Hoyt said,

There is no question that the editorial page is liberal and the regular columnists on the Op-Ed page are heavily weighted in that direction. There is also no question that The Times, though a national newspaper, shares the prevailing sensibilities of the city and region where it is published. It does not take creationism or intelligent design as serious alternatives to the theory of evolution. It prints the marriages and commitment ceremonies of same-sex couples. It covers art and cultural events out on the edge....But if The Times were really the Fox News of the left, how could you explain the investigative reporting that brought down Eliot Spitzer, New York’s Democratic governor; derailed the election campaign of his Democratic successor, David Paterson; got Charles Rangel, the Harlem Democrat who was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, in ethics trouble; and exposed the falsehoods that Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, another Democrat, was telling about his service record in the Vietnam era?