From a Times/Texas Tribune article about a Texas state senator: "Ms. Campbell, a physician certified in emergency medicine and ophthalmology, was elected in 2012 after ousting a 20-year incumbent, Jeff Wentworth, in a Republican primary runoff in Senate District 25, which stretches from northeast San Antonio to South Austin and includes parts of six counties."

If she's a physician, why doesn't the Times call her "Dr. Campbell" instead of Ms. Campbell, which is what it calls her throughout the article? The "Dr." is what Times style usually dictates for medical doctors.

A Times news article reports that Douglas Schoen in 2011 registered as a lobbyist for a Ukrainian steelmaker. Mr. Schoen "had been on a $40,000-per-month retainer as an adviser to Mr. Pinchuk since 2000," the Times says.

Now they tell us! In 2012 the Times published an article by Mr. Schoen that identified him as "a political strategist and Fox News contributor. He is the co-author with Scott Rasmussen of Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party System is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two Party System." That was the same identification the Times had on another article by Mr. Schoen that the paper published in 2011.

Mr. Schoen doesn't turn up in the Senate lobbying disclosure database, or at least he didn't when I searched. He does turn up in the Department of Justice's Foreign Agent Registration Act database.

The Times news article doesn't mention Mr. Schoen's opinion-writing for the Times, either.

Perhaps the little biographies at the end of Times opinion articles would be more useful to readers if they were more complete.

A Times news article about the purchase of two radio stations in New York by the owner of a third begins, "In a deal that will align some of New York's most popular radio stations specializing in black music, the owner of WQHT-FM — the hip-hop station better known as Hot 97 — is buying WBLS-FM and one other station for $131 million in cash."

The article continues, "Emmis's deal for WBLS, at 107.5 FM, and WLIB, at 1190 AM, is the latest in a series of changes to black radio in New York over the last few years."

I guess some people use this term "black music," but it struck me as jarring. The music itself doesn't have a color, and it isn't initially clear from the term what music is being played on the station. Afro-pop? "World music"? Jazz? Rhythm and Blues? Rap? Hip hop? Plenty of white people listen to this music and some of them even create it. You don't see the Times writing about classical music radio as "white music."

A Times article about a real-estate development in New Haven reports, "The site, on what is now the edge of downtown, is hemmed in by Route 34, an ill-conceived, 1950s-era highway that walls off the district from Union Station, Yale's extensive medical complex and a neighborhood known as the Hill."

My goodness, an "ill-conceived" highway! To read the Times op-ed page, such a thing is nearly impossible. Just a recent sampling:

From a November 23, 2010 Bob Herbert column:

Americans were fired with the idea that they could improve their circumstances, right wrongs and do good. The Interstate Highway System, an Eisenhower initiative, was under way. The civil rights movement was in flower. And soon Kennedy would literally be reaching for the moon.

Self-interest and the bottom line had not yet become the be-all and end-all.

From a May 25, 2012 post on the editorial page's "Taking Note" blog:

[Republicans] should learn from Dwight Eisenhower, who considered the interstate highway system a national security project (it's not called The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways for nothing) and take a more expansive approach to what counts as defensive spending.

From a July 30, 2012 Bill Keller column:

the largest infrastructure project in our history, the interstate highway system, was Eisenhower's baby, a reminder of the days when Republicans still believed in that stuff

From an August 8, 2010 Paul Krugman column:

a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.

So a concession in a Times news article that a highway built in the 1950s might have been a bad idea is something to behold. Not all government "infrastructure" spending turns out to be a good idea, after all.

A Times article about seasonal temporary jobs that the City of New York offers shoveling snow tells about Nadji Colon:

Nadji Colon never saw snow until he arrived in the Bronx in his late 20s from his homeland, Puerto Rico. He found it slushy and unpleasant to pick his way through.

But this winter, it cannot snow enough for him.

Mr. Colon, now 36 and unemployed, earns $12 an hour — $4 more than the state's minimum wage — to shovel snow in his Bronx neighborhood through a seasonal labor program run by the city's Sanitation Department. The program, called Emergency Snow Laborers, has recruited more than 1,800 New Yorkers to do their small part in an expansive snow-clearing operation along 6,300 miles of streets in the five boroughs....the snow is not for everyone. Mr. Colon said he had invited his friends to join him. "They're like, 'No way,' because it's hard work," he said. "It's cold out here."

Mr. Colon had no such hesitation. He estimated that he had already earned about $350 from his first stint shoveling snow two weeks ago that would go toward paying his family's rent, cable and phone bills. He and his wife, a hospital billing clerk who earns about $35,000 annually, have two young boys. They rely on $189 a month in food stamps to eat.

These guys rely on food stamps to eat, but they still have cable television? The Times doesn't explain or probe the issue, or say how expensive a cable package the family has or whether it was purchased under a deal that prohibits cancellation for some fixed time period. But it's the sort of thing that an editor might push a reporter to probe further, or even assign a follow-up article to focus on specifically — how many food stamp recipients also have cable television, and how do non-food-stamp recipient taxpayers who canceled their cable in part so that they can pay for groceries without a government subsidy feel about this? The comments on the Times article suggest that I am not the only reader who noticed this issue, and that there is a lively debate to be had about it.

A front-page New York Times article about Palestinian Arabs who work for Israeli companies with factories in the West Bank reports, "But those jeeps also help pay his $1,471 monthly salary at Zarfati, more than triple the minimum wage in Palestinian areas of the West Bank, where a 19 percent unemployment rate and lack of labor laws make finding a decent job difficult."

The Times argues that the "lack of labor laws" makes "finding a decent job difficult." Whoever edited that sentence must not have been thinking of Richard Epstein's work on the way that it is labor laws themselves that make finding a decent job difficult. There's also a bit of tautology there — is it the "19 percent unemployment rate" that makes "finding a decent job difficult" or is the 19 percent unemployment rate just a way of describing, statistically, that finding a decent job is difficult? Either way, that sentence could have benefited from some editing.

A Times news article about a Chinese dissident, Xia Yeliang, joining the Cato Institute reports:

The political labels of Professor Xia and the Cato Institute, in Washington, are strikingly different. Professor Xia got into trouble in China for being too liberal, while the institute is known as libertarian or — less to its liking — ultraconservative. But the professor and Cato officials say they have the same focus.

The "is known" is a classic Times passive construction. "Is known" by whom? By left-wing Times editors and reporters who think any point of view a scintilla to the right of their own Upper West Side ultraleftism qualifies as "ultraconservatism."

Update: More on this here.

A Times news article about investor Carl Icahn's latest move regarding Apple refers to Mr. Icahn as a "billionaire" and as a "septuagenarian."

There are other individuals mentioned in the article, including hedge fund manager David Einhorn, New York Comptroller Scott Stringer, and Apple CEO Timothy Cook, but the Times doesn't mention how much money they have or how old they are. It seems to me that if it is relevant in the case of Mr. Icahn then it is relevant in the case of the other characters in the article. Otherwise it is a double standard or a discriminatory one in which old or rich people alone have their age and assets mentioned.

Reader-watchdog-community member-contributor-content co-creator Colin77 has a good catch in a Times dispatch from Tunis. The Times article says, "Tunisia — the smallest country of North Africa, with a population of 11 million — failed to contain the spread of violence in the months after its revolution."

This makes it sound like Tunisia has the smallest population in North Africa. What the Times is trying to communicate, I think, is that Tunisia has the smallest land area of any North African country, and it has a population of 11 million. Colin77 points out that Libya has a smaller population.

"Economy and Crime Spur New Puerto Rican Exodus; High Taxes, Prices and Joblessness Driving Many in Middle Class to Mainland" is the headline at the top of the Sunday New York Times front page. It's a welcome acknowledgment by the Times of the reality that talent and capital are mobile and respond to incentives.

Some Times reporters and editors, ostrich-like, still have their heads in the sand, however. In Monday's Times, a news article by Thomas Kaplan about Governor Cuomo's plan for modest tax reductions includes the assertion, "Some studies dispute the claim that wealthy individuals flee high-tax states." That sentence contains a hyperlink to a single study, the executive summary of which acknowledges, "a few affluent households might leave a state because their income taxes are increased...It would not be credible to argue that no one ever moves to a new state because of the desire to live someplace where taxes are lower." In other words, the sentence in Mr. Kaplan's article inaccurately describes the study that the online version of the article links to.

The lead, front-page news article in today's New York Times begins:

WASHINGTON — The yearlong effort to overhaul the nation's immigration laws, which had the support of President Obama, Republican leaders and much of American business and labor, was seriously imperiled on Thursday when Speaker John A. Boehner conceded that it was unlikely he could pass a bill.

What "yearlong effort" are they talking about? Politicians have been trying to rewrite the broken immigration laws since at least 2005, when Senators McCain and Kennedy introduced legislation. McCain and Kennedy tried again in 2007, in consultation with President George W. Bush, who supported changing the laws. President Obama has paid lip service to the idea throughout his administration but has chosen instead to prioritize a series of other issues, including health care, "inequality," gun control, authorization to use military force against Syria, and an increase in the minimum wage. Mr. Obama has also increased the number of deportations to record levels. Some effort.

A Times editorial about the decision by CVS to stop selling tobacco products speaks of the need to "drive home the message that the availability of this lethal consumer product should be curtailed as much as possible and that tobacco use is socially unacceptable."

Contrast that with the Times' much more permissive attitude toward smoking marijuana, which a January 30 Times editorial recommended as a pain treatment for football players, and which a January 7 Times editorial recommended making widely available in New York even to non-football-playing customers.

The distinction seems to be that marijuana has magical elixir-like qualities on par with green tea, oatmeal, almond milk, and other health foods, while tobacco is bad for you. The problem, however, is that science, which the Times regularly faults Republicans for ignoring on issues such as climate change, doesn't exactly bear this out.

A 40-year study of Swedish men that was published in 2013, for example, found that "heavy" cannabis use, or more than 50 times over a lifetime, "was significantly associated with more than a twofold risk of developing lung cancer over the 40-year follow-up period, even after statistical adjustment for baseline tobacco use, alcohol use, respiratory conditions, and socioeconomic status." The study observed that "Cannabis (marijuana) smoke and tobacco smoke contain many of the same potent carcinogens."

In other words, the Times editorial position isn't based on what is or isn't "lethal," but on what is or is not "socially acceptable," which the Times itself is shaping with its coverage in articles such as this one from last year on "The etiquette of pot smoking in social settings....given pot's increased presence in the mainstream."

The Washington Free Beacon's Matthew Continetti has a column putting into context the article by Ken Kurson in the New York Observer featuring anonymous current and former New York Times reporters complaining about the Times editorial page and its columnists.

From an obituary/death notice in the January 26, 2014, Greenwich Time:

Leonard Smith hated pointless bureaucracy, thoughtless inefficiency and bad ideas born of good intentions. He loved his wife, admired and respected his children and liked just about every dog he ever met. He will be greatly missed by those he loved and those who loved him. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you cancel your subscription to The New York Times.

(Jim Romenesko also had this on his blog over the weekend).

Thanks to reader-participant-community member-watchdog-content co-creator NRG for sending the tip.

Michael Powell's column in the Times New York section attacks the Central Park Conservancy, suggesting that it, the High Line, Battery, and Prospect Park conservancies "tithe 20 percent of the dollars they raise" to support poorer parks. Never mind the absurdity of using the word "tithe," which means to give ten percent of, with "20 percent." The column is flawed in several ways.

First, it's hypocritical. Imagine it applying to the New York Times. Would the Times like to donate 20 percent of its news budget to poorer news organizations? Surely instead of a 1,250-person editorial staff the Times could make do with 1,000 editors and reporters, and the excess 250 staffers could go work at the Nation, or at FutureOfCapitalism, or at the New York Post. The Powell column faults the Central Park Conservancy for the supposed fact that "the top eight employees...are white," and "fifty-four of the 58 current and 'emeritus' board members listed on the website are white." At the New York Times, the chairman, vice chairman, CEO, executive editor, and editorial page editor are all "white," by Mr. Powell's definition, and the Times company board of directors isn't much more of a Rainbow Coalition.

Second, "white" is a broad-brush measure that buys into the social construct of race. When I get these sorts of surveys I usually check "other" and write in "Jew." The Central Park Conservancy board is a mix of East Side people and West Side people, Jews and gentiles, men and women. The management, described by Mr. Powell as "white," includes people with the last names Blonsky, Spinelli, Nolan, Coppersmith, Calvanese, LoCastro, Hall, and McIntosh. If there were no Italian-American representation, do you think Mr. Powell would be writing columns about it?