What an obnoxious use of the writerly "we". It's like reading an article from the 50's where the hard-boiled essayist writes about how "we" all would just like to sock a woman across the mouth when she gets too sassy. No, "we" don't. And "we" don't find these two baseball-cap-wearing, deeply uninteresting ex-fratboys remotely attractive. Don Draper, yes; petty, self-centered bullies, not so much. I'll grant you may have different tastes; please grant the same for us.

What's awesome about this is not just that he's willing to do it, but that he does it so skillfully. "I yield my remaining 5 seconds"! Nice.

save your "boos". Glenn responded to my query on the same subject a few pages back. I think it speaks for itself.

As I said in my post, if I missed where he discussed the change, I apologize: I did in fact miss it (on page 32!), and I'm sorry about that.

On the other hand, he engages in some fancy footwork in that discussion:

There was no obligation for me to change it. "Claims" was perfectly accurate. But "suggests" is probably more accurate, and I really didn't want that matter distracting from the crux of the issue here.

I like the idea of something that is "probably more accurate" than "perfectly accurate"! Funny how similar this language is to when mainstream media folks change their posts: "what I wrote was of course perfectly accurate and I stand by it, but just to make it a little more accurate even than that, and to avoid unnecessary distractions, I'll quietly change it." You ask why I bother with this issue: it's because it is so analogous to what GG attacks others for. We are to him as he is to mainstream journalists: vague irritants on minor (in their mind) issues, making strident demands for consistency which are, at best, vaguely acknowledged with a hand wave and a quiet emendation. I love what GG writes and read him every day, but I love it in part because I hate self-contradiction, no matter who does it, and (I confess) no matter how tiny the teapot.

That said, I stand by the equally important (and unaddressed) issue: one does not attribute to "The New York Times" opinions that we glean from close readings of the implications hidden in online posts by reporters. Even if the reporter were to declare outright, "I think X and so does the Times," that doesn't make it so, and reasonable people don't assert such. Major editorial decisions and opinions in the Editorial section clearly reveal the opinions of the NYT; the rest is a complex hodgepodge of participants that may indeed reveal institutional biases, but that's an argument that needs to be made on a case-by-case basis. And there is no particular basis to say that the opinions of this reporter implicitly revealed by his choice of question is in any way the opinion of the New York Times.

So first off, I notice the sub-headline has been silently emended. I presume you stand by your actions, and would not have changed it if it didn't matter, so a) props for conceding that the sub-headline does matter, and that there is a difference between "claim" and "suggest," and b) boo for quietly doing it without explicitly acknowledging that you were wrong anywhere (and apologies if you did say so somewhere in the letters and I missed it). For someone who so often emphasizes the inability of others to say when they're wrong, you're not so great at it yourself.

Second, we have

Me: The "NYT" didn't claim it, a reporter did

You: That's absurd. What NYT reporters write is, by definition, what the NYT says. Did the NYT break the story of the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program? Did the NYT report that Saddam Hussein was purchasing aluminum tubes for building nuclear weapons? Did the NYT report yesterday on the conviction of these terrorists?

It may be wrong, but it isn't absurd. If you look carefully at how the agency and authorship of newspapers is phrased, it's usually the case that when reporters for the NYT report matters of fact (ie, reporting news stories), those reports are attributed to the NYT: the NYT reports X or Y. However, when it is a matter of opinion, the usage is usually that if it is on the masthead editorial page, one says "The NYT claimed that Republicans were being dishonest," or whatever. But when it is a column written by a regular columnist, or an article flagged as "Analysis," then the opinion is usually attributed to the author, not the NYT itself (and there are additional nuances when it is, say, a movie review). As a factual matter of language use, almost no one says that the "NYT claims X" when X is an opinion implicit in an article written as a piece of reportage. And that is a reasonable practice: we know how to distinguish a reporter's opinion from the Editorial Board's, and it is worth making that distinction. Such points only hold more strongly when it is not an article appearing in the paper version, vetted by teams of editors, but rather is an online post by a reporter. Yes, the NYT takes responsibility for all articles posted on its website, but as readers, we know that even the explicit opinions there -- let alone the implicit ones -- are not those of the institution as a whole. And, indeed, common linguistic practice reflects this knowledge. Again: you may think that this is the wrong way to do things, and that every position implicit in every post by every writer should be attributed without distinction to the New York Times as a whole -- but such a desire to maintain distinctions is commonplace, reasonable, and not absurd.