TIME TO SAY BYE: MY FAREWELL COLUMN IS HERE

This is my final column for The New York Times. In the memo I wrote three years ago when applying for this job after 11 years at The Times Book Review, I vowed "to write to Times readers rather than to Twitter or to Slack".

- Pamela Paul

I knew my positions, fundamentally liberal but often at odds with what had become illiberal progressive dogma, would ruffle feathers. But as I explained, "I want to write about that vast centre/liberal space and to address what people really think and believe but are often too afraid to say" I also stipulated that I could do this job only if I quit Twitter, which had by then become a forum that could lead journalists to mistake the loudest voices for the most legitimate or to temper their positions so as to avoid social media blowback.

I did not want my positions to be unduly guided by what others might think, be they friends or strangers, office colleagues or online trolls, activist organisations or institutional powers. And the lure of affirmation can be just as potent as the fear of attack.

I wasn't looking to be loved or even liked. I had friends and family for that. I wanted to write what I believed to be the truth, based on facts and guided by fairness, but never driven by fear.