From a New York Times dispatch about succession at Bloomberg: "Mr. Bloomberg has recently set his sites on blocking new petrochemical plants that make fertilizer, plastics and packaging."
Even the Microsoft Word program gives me a double underline to indicate that "sites" should be "sights." It's a disappointment that this sort of thing makes it through the editing process at the New York Times.
Similarly, a recent New York Times article about "The Rabbi Whisperer," who helps rabbis craft and deliver sermons for the High Holidays, reported, "The Talmud, the foundational text of Jewish learning, is full of stories of rabbis putting their heads together to hash out the finer points of Judaic principals." "Principals" there should be "principles."
No one expects perfection in a daily newspaper produced on deadline by human beings, but readers who want higher standards of English usage enforced at the Times may consider that some of these errors are the consequence of a deliberate choice by the newspaper's management.
One reporter at the Times, Maggie Astor, recently posted, "Six years ago, @nytimes killed its copy desks. I was luckier than many other copy editors; I'd been thinking of moving into a reporting job anyway, and I landed well. But six years later, I'm still as disgusted and angered by the company's decision as I was when it happened. I did not get over it. I did not come to think 'it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.' And I never — never — again saw the decisionmakers the same way. That decision permanently changed my level of respect for the judgment of the people who made it."
Anyway, the Times has trouble enough on a substantive level earning the trust of readers. Why erode that trust further with sloppy usage? Readers may figure that if the newspaper doesn't place a priority on getting details right when it comes to English language, it won't place a priority on getting details right when it comes to factual accuracy, either.