A former executive editor of The New York Times weighed in Saturday on the resignation of a top reporter, saying she did not believe readers were harmed by his use of a racial slur but they were by the absence of his reporting on the coronavirus pandemic. Donald McNeil resigned from the Times last week after The Daily Beast reported that he had used a racial slur while speaking to students on an educational trip put on by the paper and that several students had filed complaints. Jill Abramson wrote in an editorial for the New York Post, “Because of Mr. McNeil’s resignation, readers are being denied his vital reporting on COVID-19 at a very inopportune moment. Were they impacted by whatever he said to a group of kids on a trip in 2019? I think not. Did Mr. McNeil’s utterance of a racial slur word with no intent to harm anyone hurt readers? Again, I think the answer is no.” Abramson was fired from the executive editor job in 2014.