“WHY on earth would you want this job?”

Two years ago, I set out to answer this question in my inaugural public editor column — if only because so many people at The New York Times had asked it. Now, as I complete my term and hand the baton to the incoming public editor, Margaret Sullivan, I want to take a second look at it.

Back then, I viewed The Times as a deeply resourced news organization that was challenged to recreate itself in an environment that was smashing old media and vaulting new forms to prominence. I saw myself as something of a coroner, called in to autopsy flawed news articles that drew complaints.

What I’ve seen has surprised me. Not so much the occasional corpse in text but the deeper changes reshaping what I hesitate to call merely “the paper.”

In these two years, The New York Times Company has been transformed, shedding most of the assets that once made it a diversified corporation. When About.com is sold, the Times Company will be back to the basics: The Times itself, the Paris-based International Herald Tribune, and two New England papers, The Boston Globe and The Telegram & Gazette in Worcester, Mass.