Is it too much to ask for right-wing media outlets to employ an ombudsman, a talented pool of reporters, and ideologically heterodox columnists like the Times; to check facts as carefully as the New Yorker; to challenge its own orthodoxies as regularly as The New Republic; and to assemble an staff alumni list as impressive an influential as The Washington Monthly?…

Conservatives should finally recognize that despite its frequently center-left approach to journalism, The New York Times employs a lot of people for whom accuracy, fairness, and balance are ends in themselves; engaging the newspaper affords an opportunity to improve it, whereas helping to destroy the broadsheet would eliminate one of America’s most powerful institutional checks on government, and deprive the left of an ally only until more partisan outlets spring up to serve readers who once were happy relying on the Times for their information.

The Times, whatever its faults, is a better general-interest newspaper than anything conservatives ever created, which is reason enough to approach it with humility and learn from its strengths.