N.Y. Times editorial page editor quits over Cotton opinion piece

NEW YORK— The New York Times’ editorial page editor resigned Sunday after the newspaper disowned an opinion piece by U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton that advocated using federal troops to quell unrest, and it was later revealed he hadn’t read the piece prior to publication.

James Bennet resigned and his deputy, James Dao, is being reassigned at the newspaper, the Times said Sunday.

The fallout was swift after the Arkansas Republican’s piece was posted online late Wednesday. It caused a revolt among Times journalists, with some saying it endangered Black employees and calling in sick on Thursday in protest.

Following a review, the newspaper said Cotton’s piece should not have been published, at least not without substantial revisions.

Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger said in a statement that he was grateful for changes Bennet had made to the paper’s opinion pages, including broadening the range of voices. Bennet, who was editor of the Atlantic before taking over the Times’ opinion pages in 2016, had received some heat for adding new voices, including conservative columnist Bret Stephens.

Even before Bennet’s resignation and the paper rescinding its support for Cotton’s piece, Sulzberger had called for beefing up the opinion section’s factchecking and suggesting that it was publishing too many opinion pieces by outsiders.

Bennet, who had revealed in a meeting on Friday that he had not read Cotton’s piece before it was posted online, had defended it following the initial protests, saying it was important to hear from all points of view.

But the Times review criticized several aspects of Cotton’s piece, starting with the headline, “Send in the Troops,” which the newspaper said in an editor’s note Saturday was “incendiary and should not have been used.”