In his March 15 column, Washington Post columnist David S. Broder claimed that The New York Times is “not normally solicitous of Republicans' feelings.” Broder made this claim in a column discussing a March 13 Times article titled “GOP Voters Voice Anxieties on Party's Fate,” which Broder criticized for purportedly “sound[ing] like a death knell for the party that has held the White House for 26 of the past 38 years,” and relying on “thin” evidence to do so. But in claiming that the Times is “not normally solicitous of Republicans' feelings,” Broder ignored a significant event in 2004, for which public editor Byron Calame has praised the Times: The paper actually launched a “conservative beat” in January of that year, which Calame praised in March 2006 for “spawn[ing] a greater awareness of conservative perspectives across the newsroom.”

Broder wrote:

The headline atop Page 1 of Tuesday's New York Times read, “GOP Voters Voice Anxieties on Party's Fate.” It sounded like a death knell for the party that has held the White House for 26 of the past 38 years. But the evidence was thin.

A New York Times-CBS News poll that included 698 self-identified Republicans found that 40 percent of them thought the Democrats were likely to win the presidency in 2008, while only 12 percent of Democrats said they believed a Republican would win. That finding is hardly a surprise. A great many Democrats I know still have trouble admitting that their candidates lost to George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. They are still mentally counting votes in Florida and Ohio that they are convinced were overlooked.

The Times, not normally solicitous of Republicans' feelings, also reported widespread concern among those it interviewed “that their party had drifted from the principles of Ronald Reagan, its most popular figure of the past 50 years.”

However, Calame wrote in a March 12, 2006, column that the paper's “conservative beat” -- then over two years old -- “has provided readers with insights and perspectives they weren't getting before in the news columns.” Calame also praised the conservative beat's influence on the rest of the Times' staff:

The new beat and the prominent display that Mr. [executive editor Bill] Keller and his editors have given significant articles it produces have spawned a greater awareness of conservative perspectives across the newsroom. ''It's created a kind of awakening,'' Suzanne Daley, the national editor, said. ''It's definitely contagious.''

That's good, because the conservative beat itself is not at full speed at the moment. While Mr. [reporter David D.] Kirkpatrick was shifted early last year to the team of Times reporters covering Capitol Hill, his reporting there on Supreme Court nominations has made good use of his conservative-movement sources and knowledge. Jason DeParle, who succeeded Mr. Kirkpatrick on the beat and wrote several major front-page articles last year, was thrown into the coverage of Hurricane Katrina in September and remains involved in a special project related to that disaster.

[...]

The front-page attention given to articles by Mr. Kirkpatrick and Mr. DeParle starting in 2004 seems likely to have helped spark the interest of other Times staffers in watching for conservative activities that could make news on their beats. Mr. Keller said he believes ''more stories are being pitched'' that include some conservative perspective. The Times's commitment to covering conservatives ''has found its way into the aisles,'' said Ms. Daley, the national editor, referring to the newsroom.

As blogger and media critic Greg Sargent noted on March 15, Broder also omitted key facts in his attack on the Times. Sargent wrote on his weblog The Horse's Mouth:

Broder accused the Times of sounding the “death knell” of the GOP and said the paper's rush to judgment was premature. But -- and here's the highly questionable part -- guess what Broder didn't tell his readers: The Times piece didn't sound the death knell of the GOP at all. In fact, the Times aired exactly the same point that Broder did -- that it would be premature to use such data for a long-term prognosis -- not once, but twice.