In a February 22, 2001, speech, the publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., talked about some of his company’s missed opportunities over the years, then said, “Before I paint too dark a picture, let me remind you that in 1896 there were 17 English-language daily newspapers in New York City. Today there are two and a half.”

For our part, we have never taken satisfaction at the demise of other newspapers in this city. We’ve had our differences with the Times on its coverage of the wars in the Middle East, its cheerleading of the drive to regulate campaign speech, and its ad-hominem attacks on such figures as Richard Perle, Miguel Estrada, Henry Kissinger, and Hootie Johnson, to name just a few of many issues.

But we haven’t been wishing the paper ill, and we take no satisfaction from its current travail or the resignations of Gerald Boyd and Howell Raines, who for all our differences was always gracious to us. Many will be rooting for the editor it is bringing back in to manage the transition to a new leadership, Jos. Lelyveld. He had recognized many of the problems on which the paper is retraining its attention. In a September 2000 speech at Tarrytown, N.Y., he warned of “persistent accuracy problems” at the paper, problems he likened to “carpenter ants nibbling at the beams that hold the thing together.” He said then that at the Times, “the attitude sometimes seems to be that accuracy is a preoccupation of petty minds.”

Reflecting on these changes, we pulled out our tattered copy of “The Art of Newspaper Making,” issued the year the Jewish Daily Forward was founded, in 1897, by the great editor of The New York Sun, Charles A. Dana. He sketches eight wonderful principles of newspapering, including, “Copy nothing from another publication without perfect credit.” Dana went on to advise young newspapermen: “Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth or the only truth.” “Support your party, if you have one,” he said. “But do not think all the good men are in it and all the bad ones outside of it.”

He went on to talk about how technology was changing and empowering newspapers. He himself had started out as a scrivener, campaigned to get America into the war against slavery, and then developed the modern broadsheet under the flag we picked up a year ago. More than any editor we can think of he would have comprehended the technological transition the industry is going through today and would have understood that satisfaction will come not from seeing our competitors driven from their own newsroom but rather from seeing more newsrooms set up in the city.