An article in Sunday's Times magazine appears under the headline "How to Roll a Joint."

It's hard to understand exactly what redeeming news value the article has. Some aging hippy Times readers and contributors such as the author of Just Say Yes: A Marijuana Memoir presumably already know how. So is the idea that the Times is trying to induce people who are not already experienced pot smokers to try it? Maybe young children or teenagers? Reasonable people may disagree on decriminalization, legalization, or medical marijuana use, but the Times' enthusiasm for this drug is almost evangelical in its eagerness to spread the news; certainly outside the bounds of journalistic neutrality, skepticism, or objectivity.

If this is the product of the much-hyped New York Times Sunday magazine relaunch under a new editor, I don't think it's an encouraging sign for the magazine's future.

A front-page Times news article reports: "In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the nation's finance industry shrank severely — and remained in a humbled state for most of the next four decades. The economy boomed in this period, with no major financial crises and less income inequality than in recent decades."

What are they talking about? JFK got elected in 1960 complaining about the slow economic growth of the Eisenhower era. And what about the 1970s? Is the Times telling us that they were an economic boom? That is not how the Times covered it back when it was happening. Even if there had been a 40-year economic boom, the notion that it was attributable to a humbled and shrunken financial industry, rather than, say, the post-World War II Pax Americana or the population growth of the baby boom or the Kennedy tax cuts or various other reasons is highly questionable. What's the policy lesson the Times wants us to learn from this claim? That if we'd just put some more banks out of business and bankers out of work, the economy would really boom for 40 years?

A Times article about a fatal Amtrak derailment includes this sentence: "Like the rest of the country's crumbling public infrastructure, its aging rail beds and decades-old trains are sagging under increased use, especially in the Northeast, where nearly three-quarters of all travel takes place on the trains, not on planes."

The Times doesn't give the source of this "nearly three-quarters of all travel" statistic, but it's almost certainly bogus. What about cars? Buses? Feet? Does the statistic refer to the percentage of trips or the percentage of passenger-miles? Does it refer only to inter-city or interstate travel? It offers the illusion of authority and precision without actually providing any useful information to readers.

The Times obituary of William Zinsser, the author of On Writing Well, includes this sentence: "In his late '80s he wrote a blog on popular culture, the craft of writing and the arts for the website of The American Scholar that won a National Magazine Award for digital commentary."

It's a small thing, but there's no need for the apostrophe before "80s." One might use an apostrophe to refer to the decade the 1980s — the apostrophe in '80s would stand in for the missing digits 19. But referring to someone's age, there are no missing digits. So there should be no apostrophe.

There used to be copy editors at the Times who would care about getting this sort of thing correct, especially in, of all places, an obituary of the author of a book on writing well. Or at least there would be Times readers who would catch it and write in so the paper could fix it for online, or editors who would catch it and fix it in later editions. But the many rounds of buyouts and layoffs at the Times that have reduced the level of experience to the point where it has started to affect quality adversely. That quality has already been reduced in the first place by the decline in American education when it comes to grammar, punctuation, and usage.

An April 27 Times web feature on "how to eat healthy meals at restaurants" showed up in my print edition of the Times this morning, two weeks after it originally appeared on the Web. The feature includes the following sentence: "Outside of major metropolitan areas, where restaurant choices are more limited, egg-based lunches and dinners are a good way to eat well."

That's a bad sentence for two reasons. First,it's clumsily worded. The phrase "where restaurant choices are more limited" is shoved up against "major metropolitan areas," not against "outside," making it sound at first as if the Times thinks restaurant choices in major metropolitan areas are "more limited." Second, once a reader figures out the meaning the Times is trying to convey, it's astoundingly condescending. As if once a Times reader gets outside the safety of New York, San Francisco, Paris, or London, the prudent move is just to order scrambled eggs for dinner. The authors of the Times article should go read Jane and Michael Stern's book Roadfood and consider revising the Times article to acknowledge that plenty of fine food is available in America outside "major metropolitan areas."

A Times dispatch from the West Bank begins, "Lina Halsa certainly made a splash at the student rally for the Islamist Hamas movement here at Birzeit University last month. Wearing a sleeveless top, tight jeans, and with her hair in a ponytail, Ms. Halsa's attire was revealing even by the standards of this liberal, secular campus."

The article runs with no photograph in either the print or the online edition of the Times. The online edition includes a hyperlink to a photo on another site.

It seems like if the Times is going to write a whole article about this woman's attire and what it means — "Ms. Halsa's audacious entry to the Hamas rally was a turning point: Fatah loyalists shamed her for her attire, while Hamas students paid her a solidarity visit" — the least it could do is run a photo of her.

A few items I had been meaning to get to sooner over the past two weeks:

Misstep? A Times article on President Obama's nomination of Gayle Smith to be the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development says of Ms. Smith's predecessor, Rajiv Shah:

But Dr. Shah had missteps as well. The Associated Press reported in 2014 that during his tenure, U.S.A.I.D. operated a social media account to encourage young Cubans to revolt against the Castro government. The secret program ran out of funds in 2012, after two years; Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, called it "dumb, dumb, dumb" after it was disclosed.

This wording seems to side with Senator Leahy in characterizing the Cuba effort as a "misstep"; a pretty clear case of left-wing opinion creeping into what is supposed to be a news article.

Correction of the Month: From the May 1 Times:

Because of an editing error, an article on Tuesday about the closing of the Carnegie Deli after the discovery of a tapped gas line misstated the reason anonymity was granted to a law enforcement official who said the follow-up investigation was an example of a more cooperative approach between Con Edison and city officials. It was because the investigation is continuing, not because the official wanted to avoid angering City Hall.

This is pretty funny for a number of reasons. First, the article didn't give a "reason anonymity was granted." It gave a reason the source "insisted an [sic] anonymity." The Times may not realize it, but those are two different things. Second, how did the editor get the impression that the official "wanted to avoid angering City Hall"? Was that reason strictly imaginary? In most cases whatever reporters, editors, and readers can know about the motives of anonymous sources is both anonymous and based on their say-so. At a certain point it becomes absurd: "The source insisted on anonymity to discuss his reasons for insisting on anonymity, for fear that if he went on the record to explain why he needed anonymity, it would reveal his identity."

Cuomo's error: Capital New York points out an error — as yet uncorrected by the Times — in Andrew Cuomo's Times op-ed calling for increased wages for fast-food workers.

Nail Salons: Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown has a thoughtful response to the Times' two-part series investigating conditions of workers at nail salons.

The Times has a compelling account of the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Strangely, the story doesn't start on page one. Also strangely, it doesn't mention the words "President Obama" or "red line" or note that the Obama administration has touted the disarmament of Syria as a foreign policy victory. If the Iranian nuclear disarmament deal is anything like the Syria disarmament deal, in which Syria is using chemical weapons following the conclusion of the deal, no wonder Congress and Prime Minister Netanyahu are concerned.

The Times story notes that "In contrast to stronger toxins like nerve agents and mustard gas, chlorine is lethal only in highly concentrated doses and where medical treatment is not immediately available, making it more an instrument of terror than of mass slaughter." That's not much consolation to those killed by the chlorine.

The lead, front-page news article in today's Times, about a claim by some economists that moving can improve outcomes for poor families, includes this sentence: "The places most conducive to upward mobility include large cities — San Francisco, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and Providence, R.I. — and major suburban counties, such as Fairfax, Va.; Bergen, N.J.; Bucks, Pa.; Macomb, Mich.; Worcester, Mass.; and Contra Costa, Calif."

The population of Providence, R.I., was 178,042 in the 2010 census and was estimated by the census at 177,994 for July 1, 2013. The population of the city of Worcester, Mass., was 181,045 in the 2010 census and was estimated by the census at 182,544 for July 1, 2013. If Providence is a "large city" by the Times definition, then so is Worcester. Certainly it's inaccurate to describe Worcester as a "suburban county," as the county of Worcester includes rural towns like Petersham and Royalston, the city of Worcester, and suburban areas like Holden and Northborough. If the Times is under the impression that Worcester County is a suburb of Boston in the way that, say, Fairfax, Va,. is a suburb of Washington, D.C., or Bergen County in New Jersey is a suburb of New York City, it has it wrong. You'd think that maybe the Times company would have figured that out from having having owned the Worcester Telegram and Gazette and the Boston Globe for all those years, but alas, they never quite figured it out, and, to judge by today's story, they still haven't.

An article in the sports section of the Times is a great illustration of the way reporters describe reality in whatever way they want to spin it. The issue is Greenwich, Connecticut. A 2009 Times article described it as "the ritzy suburb and haven for New York City's elite." A 1997 Times article reported "This affluent town, where backyards are as big as Rhode Island and more than a few people take pride in talking like George Plimpton, is committed to maintaining its image as a sanctuary for those with wealth and taste."

Today's sports article takes a different approach; an injured boxer is described as living "in a small bedroom in a working-class neighborhood in Greenwich, in a modest house his family rents cheap from a devoted friend."

"Ritzy" and "affluent"? Or "working-class"? It's the same town, it just depends on what the reporter is trying to get the readers to think. If "working-class" neighborhoods and "modest" rental houses indeed exist in Greenwich, maybe the Times should think again the next time it is tempted to paint the whole town with the "ritzy" and "affluent" brush?

A Times account of an Israel Independence Day celebration in Washington featuring Vice President Biden and the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer includes this passage:

Mr. Dermer, using a Yiddish word, said, "We are family, mishpachah." He added, "All families have disagreements," but "what unites us is far more important than what divides us."

The Hebrew word for family is mishpachah. The Yiddish word is similar but might be spelled in English mishpokhe and pronounced more like that. It's not clear why the Times thinks the ambassador was using a Yiddish word rather than a Hebrew word. The transcript of Ambassador Dermer's remarks doesn't shed much light. Unless I am missing something (which is certainly possible, since I wasn't at the event), it's a pretty good metaphor for the entire relationship between the Netanyahu administration and the Times-Obama administration-American left. Netanyahu and Dermer are speaking in Hebrew, and the Times is listening in Yiddish.

One way the New York Times demonstrates its left-wing bias is its insistence on labeling conservatives as such without applying similar labels to liberals. It's hard to find a more glaring example of this behavior than in this story from the Times business section about an executive who cut his own pay while setting a $70,000 minimum wage at his firm.

The Times article mentions "Michael Strain, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group in Washington." It mentions "Diana Furchtgott-Roth, an economist at the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research." And it mentions "Tim Kane, an economist at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University." The word "conservative" operates as a kind of warning by the left-wing New York Times to its left-wing readers: "Watch out, be careful, folks, these organizations aren't in ideological tune with what you'd usually expect here."

The same TImes article refers to "Sam Stein, an editor at The Huffington Post." Not "the liberal Huffington Post." Just, "the Huffington Post," with no ideological warning label. And the same Times article also quotes a teacher at Harvard University, without referring to "liberal Harvard University."

It's ridiculous, especially given that both AEI and the Manhattan Institute are ideologically diverse and probably just as accurately described as "center-right," if labels are necessary at all.

The New York Times writes a whole long article about a study of American drone strikes in Yemen issued by what the Times calls "a legal advocacy group," the Open Society Justice Initiative. No mention of the initiative's funding or its chairman, George Soros.

When the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson participate in public affairs through philanthropy, the Times calls it "dark money," calls them billionaires, and puts their name in the headlines. But when it is Mr. Soros advancing a left-wing agenda, that billionaire gets a free pass — the Times leaves him out of the story. It sure looks like a double standard.

A Times article about Robert Mercer, a donor who supports Senator Ted Cruz, describes Mr. Mercer as " a reclusive Long Islander who started at I.B.M. and made his fortune using computer patterns to outsmart the stock market."

"Reclusive" is newspaper jargon for anyone who doesn't drop whatever he is doing immediately and run to the telephone whenever a newspaper reporter calls. Its use in these instances, as in the New Republic's description of "reclusive" Harold Simmons, bears no resemblance to the dictionary definition of the word reclusive, which describes someone living in solitary confinement, secluded from the world like a monk or a hermit. It's a way the newspapers pressure people to cooperate with them by hurling insults at those, especially Republicans, who don't play their game.

The Times carries a column that reads like a paid advertisement — free of any skepticism — about a book called "Just Say Yes: A Marijuana Memoir."

The column and the book try to make the point that the author of the book, Catherine Hiller, smoked marijuana "more or less every day for the past 50 years," and "her life turned out nicely."

Plenty of other books from less obscure publishers get much less attention from the Times than this book does, so you have to wonder why it is that the Times fell so hard for this one. The Times column came on top of an article that the author wrote for the the Times about her drug-buying experiences. Maybe this is the sweet spot for the Times demographic — hippies in their 60s and 70s — but for anyone younger or less invested in the pro-marijuana advocacy campaign, it risks coming off as kind of weird.