This site spends a lot of time criticizing the Times, but we also try to notice when the newspaper performs well. Two recent examples of enterprising journalism that received front-page play in the Times despite running against the paper's ideological predilictions are: 1) A scathing and long profile of Norman Seabrook, the president of the union that represents New York City prison guards, and his influence with Mayor de Blasio, exposing public-sector unionism at its worse and 2) an article about how, as the Times put it, "The Obama administration overturned a ban preventing a wealthy, politically connected Ecuadorean woman from entering the United States after her family gave tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic campaigns, according to finance records and government officials."
For all the Times's many flaws that we often dwell on here, it says something impressive about the newspaper that it publishes some of the best investigative reporting on Democratic corruption. Now, one could argue that each of these articles also subtly advances a left-wing agenda — against abuse of prison inmates, in the case of the Norman Seabrook article, or in favor of campaign finance reform, in the case of the article about the Ecuadorean woman. But both articles seem to me to be not driven primarily by those ideologies but rather by a broader sense that government should be impartial and accountable to the public rather than captured by powerful private interests. Anyway, have a look at them, if you are so inclined, and let me know in the comments if I am being too charitable to the Times (always a risk) or if I am correct that these two stories are examples of Times excellence.