The Times carries a breathtaking dispatch about a McDonald's in Midtown Manhattan that has been overrun by lawless and sometimes violent drug addicts. "Nobody from this McDonald's, or the corporate office, responded to requests for comment," the Times reports.
There's no indication that the Times sought comment from the office of Mayor de Blasio, who is, you know, responsible for quality of life and law enforcement in the city. Or that the paper sought comment from the police department, or from the district attorney for New York County. In fact the name of Mayor de Blasio, who has been associated in other newspapers, such as the New York Post, with a decline in the city's public order and quality of life, is nowhere to be found in the Times dispatch. It seems a strange blind spot.
One Times staffer tweeted that "that McDonald's has been this way for a long time—It didn't develop these problems with the new administration." If so, why is the Times only writing about it now? And why not explain that to readers of the article in the article, rather than in Twitter. There are probably plenty of Times readers who aren't frequent enough visitors to that McDonald's — maybe even to any McDonald's — to know how long the problem has been there.