A Back-and-Forth With the New York Times

Good Morning,

Thank you for writing to us. I have shared this feedback with the appropriate editors.

We are an independent newsroom that aims to provide our readers with a full picture of what is happening in the world so that they can make informed decisions about their lives. We do that by pursuing and presenting the facts without fear or favor.

Our news editors believe that the thousands of "No Kings" protests on Saturday were a story deserving of significant attention. That is why they dispatched more than 20 reporters and a dozen photographers to 18 locations around the country, from metropolises like Los Angeles to more rural areas like Shepherdstown, W.Va. We had a reporter working this story in London as well.

On Friday, we published a preview of the protests. On Saturday morning, we published our day-of article and placed it in a prominent position on our home page, where it stayed for about 24 hours. We updated that article as reporters filed dispatch after dispatch from their various locations. On Saturday afternoon, we published a collection of imagery from around the world, which then fed a slideshow on our home page that was then replaced later that evening by this video. Most of our audience reads, watches and listens to our coverage online, and this protest coverage on our platforms was robust. All these efforts fed into two images from the protests on our print front page Sunday, and were pushed to our millions of followers on social media:

https://tinyurl.com/3ampsyas

https://tinyurl.com/yt2utkmy

https://tinyurl.com/3jst7py5

Many of our readers believe that these protests should have gotten more prominence on Sunday’s print front page. Our editors respect the reasons for that opinion. We’d also like to point out a few things on this:

— On Sundays we tend to showcase reporting that readers can only find at The Times, in this case, the results of a monthslong investigation into how members of a murderous regime have escaped justice. Two other articles on the Sunday front addressed major themes that came up in the protests, namely President Trump's approach to the shutdown/governing and whether the Democratic Party can regain power in Washington.

— Having two photos on the Sunday front page and deep nationwide reporting on most of an inside page is significant print coverage. Many more readers find our coverage live online during and after the protests, and as I’ve said, that coverage was significant as well.

— We covered the “No Kings” protest in June on the Sunday print front page, as well as inside the paper. We covered the July protests as well.

Editorial judgment calls on ongoing protests draw on a lot of factors. The “No Kings” protests last weekend made similar arguments as the “No Kings” protests in June that we covered on the front page; given that, do you put those October protests on the front page again? We decided that the October protests did warrant prominent treatment, and we provided it through two photos on the front page, and then had robust coverage inside the paper. Two photos on Sunday's front page is significant real estate. We are serving a wide and diverse audience every day, and our editors make independent judgment calls for online and print display. As with all such choices, reasonable people can disagree about them.

Key players in these decisions are the members of our Standards team, which has grown to 11 editors. Unlike the Public Editor, who worked independently from the newsroom in the Opinion department and gave retrospective analysis of perceived missteps, our Standards editors work beside their newsroom colleagues to review their articles before publication.

Now, I can't speak to why letters by you and others were not published. Our Letters page is also run by the Opinion department. For our part here in the newsroom, we have not been silent on these matters. I have replied to anyone who shared their feedback here.

A last thought. Our reporters and editors cover the Trump administration aggressively, thoroughly and prominently, regularly shining a light on actions and decisions that people have a right to know about. Many of those actions and decisions were at the heart of what protesters were marching about.

I hope this clarifies, and that you will support our journalism. Thank you again for writing.

Aidan Gardiner, news assistant

I thank you for your prompt reply. I also respect and appreciate the reasoning you enumerated in response to my letter, although my opinion is unchanged. Since you confirmed that “many of our readers believe that these protests should have gotten more prominence,” a discussion, or at least a reference in “letters” (which you explain is not in your purview) would be of value to those readers and others. I would assume that there was likely some debate among the editors. This seems precisely what could be best addressed by an ombudsman, and, again, I regret that out of many thousands of positions, that one was eliminated. 

The salient fact remains that this was likely the largest protest in the history of our country, and you made the decision to place the print story on page 23.

With appreciation and all due respect,

David Shactman