In a front-page New York Times news article about the presidential prospects of Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, comes this passage: "Throughout his political career, he has championed populist platitudes like the 'dignity of work' that have resonated with working-class voters in all corners of Ohio while also supporting liberal social causes like women's reproductive rights and L.G.B.T.Q. rights."

The Times repeats the language in a photo cutline: "Mr. Brown has championed platitudes like the 'dignity of work' that have long resonated with working-class voters in all corners of Ohio."

A "platitude," according to my authoritative Webster's Second Unabridged dictionary, is "commonplaceness, dullness, insipidity; as there was much platitude in his remarks" or "a trite, dull, or commonplace remark, especially one uttered as if it were a novelty or matter of importance."

A New York Times editorial, "North Korean Nuclear Shell Game," about the Trump administration's North Korean nuclear diplomacy complains about "no deadlines, no verification regime, no penalties for noncompliance," and asserts, "Mr. Trump's special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, has yet to meet a North Korean official more than two months since his appointment."

Never mind the hypocrisy and inconsistency — the Times cheerleads for sketchy nuclear deals with Iran and even with North Korea when they are reached by Democratic administrations, but once a Republican gets into office, all of a sudden the Times editorials sound like they are being ghostwritten by Frank Gaffney.

Never mind that the Times doesn't even acknowledge the Trump administration's significant accomplishment of achieving the safe release of three Americans who had been held hostage by North Korea.

From the latest article in the New York Times' coverage of the Harvard admissions affirmative action case:

Claire Jean Kim, a professor of Asian-American studies at the University of California, Irvine, said the Harvard lawsuit is the "continuation of a historical dynamic that's been around for almost two centuries."

It's been a long time in coming since Smartertimes first reported on the trips back in 2014, but the New York Times is finally suspending the money-making, journalist-guided luxury trips it has been running to Iran. The Algemeiner has news of the Times decision.

Of all the angles for the New York Times to choose for a front-page post-election political story, the "vanishing Northeastern Republican" one they used is pretty lame.

The Times blames President Trump: "A Trump-Fueled 'Wipeout' for House Republicans in the Northeast," is the headline.

But the Times has been writing the obituary of Northeastern Republicans since long before Donald Trump became a political force.

Here, for example, is a Times dispatch from 2006:

It was a species as endemic to New England as craggy seascapes and creamy clam chowder: the moderate Yankee Republican.

A front-page New York Times news article about the federal lawsuit over Harvard's admissions practices reports, "Harvard has officially permitted students to see their admissions files since 2015, after a group of Stanford students successfully used a federal education law to gain access to their records."

That's not accurate. Harvard permitted students to do this in the early 1990s. Stanford had nothing to do with it. I know this because I got a copy of mine, or at least the summary sheet. Here is coverage from the Crimson at the time. A Harvard student from that era who is a friend of mine and who was my colleague at the New York Sun, Josh Gerstein, recounted the whole story in a recent piece for Politico.

From the Jim Rutenberg media column, returned after an absence:

He has succeeded in creating a daily narrative in which he is the central figure," Steve Coll, the dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism and a staff writer at The New Yorker, told me. "And he uses props and invented opposition — whether they are migrants hundreds of miles from the U.S. border or the press right in front of him — to pursue this kind of idea he has about how his populism works."

From a New York Times staff editorial about how congressional Democrats might work with President Trump after the midterm election:

With Republicans likely to retain control of the Senate, the odds of even a vaguely progressive bill of any real significance making it through the upper chamber are slim. It's hard to imagine Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, allowing his members to come within 100 miles of, say, a costly infrastructure plan.

Under the headline "The Billionaire Who Ruined Sears," the New York Times runs an op-ed piece asserting of Edward Lampert, "In 2005, he merged the rejuvenated Kmart with Sears, then a conservatively run but still thriving nationwide retailer." The deal was announced in 2004, not 2005, and at the time, the New York Times itself described Sears not as thriving. Rather, the Times reported at the time that Sears "has been on the wane for the last 40 years." Said the Times in 2004, "Customer traffic and sales have been sluggish at both Kmart and Sears." The Times article reporting on the deal quoted a marketing professor who said, "both of these companies are faltering." It described Sears as having been "struggling to reinvent itself while larger and more nimble chains, including Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot and Lowe's, spirited away once-loyal Sears customers with better merchandise, better prices or both." It reported of Sears, "by the 1970's its retail fortunes were in decline."

A front-page news article in today's New York Times focuses on "how the president demeans women." It takes until the 18th paragraph of the article for the Times to acknowledge, "The president often expresses his ire by comparing women to animals, an effort to dehumanize his opponents that he also uses against men."

Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital have concluded that a cardiologist "fabricated or falsified data in 31 published studies that should be retracted," the New York Times reports. The Boston Globe had the story first, on its front page yesterday, but the Times gives no credit to the Globe, to its "Stat News" subsidiary, or to Retraction Watch for breaking the story. That seems kind of lame.

"G.O.P. Finds an Unexpectedly Potent Line of Attack: Immigration," is the headline over a news article in today's Times. The article was interesting, but what made me laugh was the headline. Who was it, exactly, who didn't expect immigration to work as an issue for Trump Republicans? The Democrats? The Trump Republicans who are the ones using the issue? Or the reporters and editors in the Times newsroom and their left-leaning readers? How many more times does this have to happen before it ceases to be unexpected?

From a Metro section news article about federal criminal charges against doctors prescribing painkillers comes an example of how reporters collaborate with prosecutors to cast accused criminals in the most negative possible light: "Dr. Pietropinto, the psychiatrist who saw people at night in a rented office on Fifth Avenue, wrote thousands of prescriptions for large amounts of oxycodone in exchange for $50 to $100 in cash per visit, the complaint said."

In a New York Times arts section review by Jason Farago of "Chagall, Lissitzky, Malevich: The Russian Avant-Garde in Vitebsk, 1918-1922," a new exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York, comes a reference to "Belarus, the last dictatorship in Europe." What about Russia? Turkey? Crimea? I suppose Russia and Turkey both are partly in Europe, partly in Asia, but they aren't free countries, at least according to Freedom House, and they are partly in Europe. At least using a geographic definition of Europe.

A New York Times article about a Conde Nast editor-turned-L.A. maitre d refers to "Jeffrey Klein, the young hotelier behind the Sunset Tower."

A January 2017 article about Mr. Klein elsewhere on the internet said he was 48, and a 2011 New York Times report on his commitment ceremony put his age then at 41.

I'm in my 40s myself, so I can't really, in good conscience, personally complain about the Times characterizing Klein as "young." Times readers in their teens, 20s, or 30s, however, might be skeptical about the description of someone in his late 40s as "young." In general, in situations such as this, the Times would be better off just giving someone's age rather than characterizing the person as old or young.