If It’s Thursday, It Must Be ‘Home’ — No More

For many longtime readers of The Times, Thursday was tinged with sadness. One of their favorite weekly sections, Home, was no longer in the paper. The section was discontinued after the March 5 edition, almost exactly 38 years after its debut.

Under Abe Rosenthal, the executive editor, Home was part of a bold new effort to strengthen readership (and advertising revenue) at The Times with a host of new features sections, including Living and Weekend.

Home debuted on March 17, 1977, with offerings that included a personal essay by Ada Louise Huxtable, the paper’s celebrated architecture critic, on her own New York homes; the first Hers column, this one by the novelist Lois Gould; and the author William Zinsser writing (as felicitously described by David Dunlap in a recent piece for Times Insider) on “the jogging phenomenon that was overrunning New Haven.”

Now, with newspaper economics changing drastically, and in the wake of some recent buyouts and layoffs, the section is no more. Already, it is missed.

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The Future of The Times, as Seen by an N.Y.U. Class

Jay Rosen, who does lots of innovative things in his role as journalism professor at New York University, came up with a new wrinkle for the current semester: a whole class on the future of The New York Times.

He told me in an email: “I want my students to learn that they can shape the future of journalism and media. But I also want them to know what they’re talking about. So we study what’s being done, first, and then we think about improving it. That is our approach. First an inventory, then a review.”

And, he added: “Settled institutions matter. The work of adapting them to a changed world is important work.”

Now the class has published its initial results, based mostly on correspondence or conversations with about 25 Times employees, past or present, some of whom were invited to appear before the class. (I was one of them.)

The students’ work is impressive, and – although it’s still in progress – I thought I’d share it here.

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‘There Was No Crop’ of Selma Photograph

Many readers wrote to me over the weekend, upset that a front-page photo of President Obama and his family leading a commemorative march in Selma, Ala., did not include former president George W. Bush and his wife, Laura. The Bushes were also in the front line of marchers.

Twitter was ablaze with criticism of The Times, many conservative news organizations wrote critical articles — and my email inbox overflowed. Some readers said they were canceling their Times subscriptions. Others were simply disappointed.

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Was Headline ‘Possibly’ Too Easy on Hillary Clinton?

Updated, 4:15 p.m. It is a truth universally acknowledged that no story involving Hillary Rodham Clinton may be published without vociferous criticism of one kind or another following close behind.

And so it was with Michael Schmidt’s article Monday night (which appeared above the fold on Tuesday’s front page) that Mrs. Clinton used only her personal email, not a government account, for correspondence while she was secretary of state.

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Trying to Keep a ‘Celebrity Class of Commenters’ Happy

Censorship! Discrimination! Downright confusion! These are some of the complaints I get from readers about The Times’s reader commenting system and its glitches. It’s always a hot topic and more so, it seems, in recent days.

I talked with the community editor, Bassey Etim, on Tuesday to address some complaints and see where Times commenting is headed.

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Why a Reporter’s ‘Epic Rant’ on Twitter Gets No Argument Here

On Twitter this week, James Risen laid out his plan for the future:

He also wrote: “My son is a reporter. I don’t want him to have to live in a country where there is less press freedom than when I started as a journalist.” (Hadas Gold of Politico, among others, wrote about the Risen tweets, which The Blaze called an “epic rant.”)

Mr. Risen, an investigative reporter for The Times, was writing in response to Mr. Holder’s statements in a National Press Club speech Tuesday defending the Obama administration’s record on press rights. Mr. Risen, who narrowly escaped jail time as he insisted on protecting a confidential source, begged to differ – in no uncertain terms.

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Tributes From All Over for the Incomparable David Carr

The Times did right by its brilliant media columnist, David Carr, on Friday, featuring a beautifully written obituary on the front page, above the fold, with a perfect black and white photograph. It was accompanied by a perceptive appraisal from his friend the film critic, A. O. Scott. On the home page, there were other offerings, too: Links to some of the best Carr quotes, to an excerpt from his book, to the video of a panel he moderated just before he died, and to the trailer for “Page One,” the documentary in which he played a starring role.

And there were many tributes elsewhere. I’ll aggregate some of them here for readers who may not have been glued to Twitter, which on Thursday night turned into an Irish wake – complete with keening and storytelling – in the hours after he collapsed in the newsroom he loved. (Tim O’Brien, formerly of The Times, and now publisher of Bloomberg View, was especially riveting.) Poynter compiled some of the tweets.

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The Times and Transgender Issues (Part 1 of 2): On Pronouns

In August 2013, soon after Chelsea Manning announced that she identified as a woman and no longer wanted to be known as Bradley Manning, The Times made a quick – and I thought appropriate – adjustment. Articles began referring to Private Manning with the feminine pronoun and the use of the name Chelsea. It caused a bit of a scramble at the time, because editors were concerned about clarity for readers when referring to the high-profile soldier who had just been sentenced to prison for leaking classified information. But in the end, a ruling principle – the preference of the individual – held sway.

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In Black and White, Illustration Sparks Reader Concerns

Liz Ananat was one of many readers who wrote to me about an illustration accompanying an Op-Ed essay published Tuesday on domestic violence. The piece was powerful, making the point that “men who are eventually arrested for violent acts often began with attacks against their girlfriends and wives.” But for some readers, dismay at the illustration overwhelmed their reaction to the article itself.

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