Bari Weiss

A few weeks ago I was 40,000ft in the air with Nellie, my wife, and our newborn daughter on our first cross-country flight when the latter decided to test the technological limits of her Pampers Pure Protection Size 2. I was bent over in the aisle, blocking traffic, sweating, wrangling her out of her soiled onesie, when I realised that in our attempt to pack for several weeks on the opposite coast we had made the rookie mistake of forgetting to put a change of clothes in our nappy bag. So there we were, having woken up at 3 a.m. for this flight. We had a half-dozen hats and tiny fleece socks and every conceivable gadget (portable white noise machine; baby ear muffs) yet not a scrap of fabric to dress our child in.

Dear A.G. (Sulzberger), It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from the New York Times. I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of the Times as their home. The reason for this effort was clear: The paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers. Dean Baquet and others have admitted as much on various occasions. The priority in Opinion was to help redress that critical shortcoming. I was honoured to be part of that effort, led by James Bennet.