Our man in governance: An appreciation: columnist Hoffer Kaback at the decade mark in filing provocative dispatches on board practices ... and malpractices.

• Position: ENDNOTE

HOFFER KABACK celebrated his 10th year as lead columnist for DIRECTORS & BOARDS in 2007. That's an impressive run. Columnists are susceptible to high burnout. Writer Nora Ephron said it best: "Being a columnist is like being married to a nymphomaniac: Every time you think you're through, you have to start all over again."

It first started when he submitted a manuscript on corporate governance to DIRECTORS & BOARDS in 1995. He was then, as now, president of an investment firm--and a self - described "quasi-frustrated writer." (A Shakespeare buff, he named his firm Gloucester Capital Corp., after the Bard's Duke of Gloucester.) He had done some outside-the-classroom writing at Harvard Law School, including several faculty profiles and a yearlong gig penning the anonymous "Fenno" column, the Harvard Law Record version of an Art Buchwald/Russell Baker humor column. Armed with his J.D., he practiced corporate and securities law in the 1970s. He then went to Wall Street where, during the 1980s and '90s, he became engaged in investing in takeovers and other situations and also acted as a consultant on leveraged buyouts and to large hedge funds. He also served on three public company boards. For years, he has been the only American member of the advisory board for the Conference Board of Canada's National Awards in Governance.

At most book and magazine publishers, the success rate for having an unsolicited manuscript accepted can be barely a tad higher than for acquiring a winning lottery ticket. Nonetheless, much like scouts for sports teams, editors always are keen to discover new talent. As soon as I read "Principles to Govern By," as he titled his article, I knew Hoffer was an original thinker with a distinctive "voice" and writing style. I accepted it immediately. His article led off the Summer 1995 issue, and its worthiness was seconded when it was reprinted in the Wall Street Journal's op/ed page. He then followed up that original submission with "The Case for Cash for Directors," a powerful critique of the movement then gathering momentum to have directors take more of their compensation in stock. The article, appearing in the Winter 1996 edition, packed a punch: It generated 13 pages of pro and con commentaries in the following issue.

There was no doubting that he had the right stuff to take on a regular column. It launched in the first issue of 1997, under the moniker "Quiddities" ("the essence of a thing," per the dictionary definition)...