I think as an investigative reporter I had tough standards, but I don't think of myself as a tough person.

People often assume New York City is no place to keep a dog. This is certainly what my parents told me when I was growing up there. But I have found this not to be the case at all.

What I hold dear is well-known to all of my colleagues. And, really, The Times is the kind of place, the greatest journalism doesn't just pop forth from our heads. It's, you know, a group of people, and the great ideas bubble up from the reporters to their editors and get to us.

The Obama administration has had seven criminal leak investigations. That is more than twice the number of any previous administration in our history. It's on a scale never seen before. This is the most secretive White House that, at least as a journalist, I have ever dealt with.

I think our primary function is to create the strongest, deepest, most interesting news report there is in the world.And whether it's on the front page of the newspaper or leading the home page doesn't really matter. We reach a huge audience on the Web. And really, you know, the journalists, whether they are reporters or editors or Web producers or multimedia specialists, we're all creating, you know, the journalism that is the bedrock of our news report. And that's true for the newspaper, the Web, our apps, and you name it.

What's next for me? I don't know. So I'm in exactly the same boat as many of you.

As someone who has spent a lot of her career as an investigative reporter, I'll confess that a frustration of mine has always been that so much investigative journalism involves a dissection of events in the past.