I posted a piece on Friday looking back at Simon Kelner's 13 years at the helm of The Independent.
To date, it has generated only three public comments, one critical of Kelner's poster-style front pages, another calling him "a great editor" but complaining about his egotism and a third taking me to task for not giving him due credit for his paper's opposition to the invasion of Iraq.
Privately, I received several calls. One pointed out that there was a long list of friends with whom Kelner had fallen out and I should have listed them. (I'll come back to that).
But there were two calls from journalists I know well who said I had not properly reflected Kelner's good points, particularly his cleverness at keeping the Indy afloat when it could so easily have gone under.
A similar point was made by Peter Preston in The Observer. He wrote that without "bustling, dynamic" Kelner guiding the paper through "the traumas of Tony O'Reilly... in all probability, there'd be nothing left to cheer for."
Furthermore, an email arrived from another journalist friend, now an academic, who was upset that I had failed to be as positive about Kelner as I should have been. He echoed one of the callers who had said: "You damned him with faint praise."
I did believe that I had been fair, but those calls, the email message and Preston's generous comment have given me pause for thought. I need therefore to give Kelner his due.
Let me place on record my admiration for what Kelner achieved, especially throughout the O'Reilly years of ownership, in which money was always in short supply.
It was tough to maintain a sense of mission during the lengthy Independent News & Media stand-off between Tony and Gavin O'Reilly on one side and the dissident shareholder, Denis O'Brien, on the other, with the latter persistently calling for the disposal of the Indy.
Though I mentioned it in the last posting, the boldness of turning the paper into a compact and the way Kelner carried it out did make a huge impact across the whole industry (and around the world).
His front pages advocating a point of view did set his paper apart from the rest of the quality titles. It certainly made the paper's agenda transparent.
And, yes, I do think the paper's consistent stand against the war on Iraq is worthy of praise. Principle was yoked to passion, and that is to Kelner's credit.
Indeed, it is Kelner's journalistic passion that I didn't convey in my original posting. He truly loves newspapers. The ink is in his veins.
One caller said: "You have to hand it to him - he's held that paper together by the force of his will. Call it ego if you must, but it worked."
That view was balanced by a caller who thought Kelner too willing to sacrifice his friends. Aside from Roger Alton, whom I referred to, he mentioned Kim Fletcher, Tristan Davies and Ian Birrell as victims of Kelner's self-centred approach. However, fences have been mended in most of those cases and friendships renewed.
Finally, an emailer urged me to point out that Kelner is a unique editor - at the serious end of the press - in not having gone to university. After taking his A-levels at Bury grammar school, he went to Lancashire Polytechnic [now the University of Central Lancashire] to study journalism.
In one sense, you might call him the last of a breed because it is unlikely to happen again. On the other hand, it didn't happen too often in the past (some examples: Harry Evans of the Sunday Times and Times; Charlie Wilson of The Times; and, surprisingly, Charlie Douglas-Home of The Times).
Then again, that throws up a couple of questions: does the lack of a university degree make any difference to a journalist's fortunes?
And, in Kelner's specific case, surely going to a polytechnic is very different from starting out as a 14-year-old copy boy, as Wilson did, or stepping straight from school on to a paper as Evans did, aged 16, (and I did, aged 17)?
Anyway, Kelner has university status now: he is a fellow at Uclan and his picture is on the boardroom wall.