Steven Erlanger is the New York Times’ new culture editor. And he’s jumped into the job with a memo to his troops exhorting them to do better: “I’ve been impressed and gratified by some of what we’ve published in the last weeks of the year. But I’ve also been dismayed by some of the flat, careless and inelegant writing I’ve seen, some of which has gotten into the paper. What we do in the section matters. I’m concentrating now on understanding how it works before deciding how to make it better.”