I've lost the capacity to gauge the opprobrium—what’s irrational versus what’s a reasonable amount of Internet outrage these days,” said James Bennet, editorial-page editor of The New York Times, and someone talked about as a future contender for the Times’s top newsroom job. “Look,” he went on, “we’re recruiting different types of writers than we have traditionally, and I’ll make some mistakes. It’s just gonna happen.”
Actually think he's lost his capacity entirely.
There was an episode last March when two prominent national security reporters at the Times took the unusual step of publicly disparaging a Times op-ed, written by the former British M.P.-turned-contentious Twitter phenom Louise Mensch, who has been criticized for fanning conspiracy theories pertaining to Russia. Another eruption involved an op-ed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince, which was alternately lambasted as a “pro-mercenary,” “advertorial,” and a “sales pitch for more mercenaries.” On the anniversary of Donald Trump’s inauguration, Bennet devoted the entire editorial page to letters from Trump supporters. And Bennet himself committed the sort of unforced journalistic blunder that can bruise careers at a place like the Times when he inserted an editing error that led to a lawsuit, later dismissed, by Sarah Palin.
Same, really. Erik Prince, a longtime left-leaning senator. Potato, potahto.