“I really lament the loss of a talent that I respect and admire more than you could know,” Sulzberger, 39, told The Daily Beast about Bennet’s abrupt forced resignation this past Sunday—a mere four days after Bennet’s deputy Jim Dao and a junior editor, former Weekly Standard staffer Adam Rubenstein, published Cotton’s online screed. It was jarringly titled “Send in the Troops,” a polemic in which the Donald Trump-loving Republican demanded that the U.S. military be deployed in response to widespread protests against police brutality.

“But at the end of the day, the most important thing, when you have these crises, is: Can you show up on Monday morning and lead the team out of it,” Sulzberger added. “I really regret that the answer we all got [for Bennet] was ‘no.’”…

Yet A.G., who comes across as an empathetic boss trying clean up a mess made by others, should be held largely accountable for the circumstances that led to the latest troubles, especially the business imperative to churn out massive amounts of content under demanding time pressures to keep readers engaged, said a prominent journalist who asked not to be further identified.

“I was shocked that A.G. didn’t accept any responsibility himself for the circumstances that surrounded this particular controversy,” this person told The Daily Beast. “The editorial pages and the op-ed pages traditionally report to the publisher… The publisher is supposed to be shaping the strategy of the editorial and opinion pages. That’s always been the fun of owning a newspaper.”