Marie Colvin (second row, third from left)/Yale Daily News photo

As a Yale student in the 1970s, Marie Colvin was a “noise-maker” with a strong personality, one of her friends tells the Yale Daily News. “She was very noisy — not in a rude way, but like ‘I’m here, pay attention,’” says Bobby Shriver. “She wore a lot of all-black outfits, high heels, scarves, smoking thousands of cigarettes a day. She was a character.”

* Foreign correspondent, Yale alum Marie Colvin killed on assignment
* Colvin’s mother recalls reporter’s determination to get the story

“For me, it was not so much liberating that, now I can have opinions,” Times columnist Bill Keller said at a CUNY event Wednesday night. “It’s liberating that when I have opinions, I can say them.” He also told the audience:

Watching The New York Times try to be even-handed on some issues is like trying to watch somebody dance their kids’ dance styles. We look like we’re trying too hard. Yes, we should be even-handed, we should certainly follow the basic rule of reporting, challenging your assumptions, and we should be ruthless about having a public editor or an editors’ note to call ourselves out. … But it is possible to be fair and still radiate a cultural persona.

* Bill Keller says NYT readers “have not forgotten we blew it on Iraq”