The Year’s Best Times Opinion Coverage

We’re using today’s newsletter to highlight a selection of the best Times Opinion coverage of the year, as chosen by the department’s editors.

As Katie Kingsbury, who runs Times Opinion, wrote to us:

What I’ve always admired about The Times’s readers is that they don’t expect our opinion journalism to tell them what to think. They’re not looking to have their views affirmed or their understanding reflected back to them. What readers want of us in Opinion is — as best we can — to surprise them, delight them, engage them and, ultimately, to help them to think for themselves.

We try to do that every day by inviting intelligent discussion by informed people. In 2023, it meant offering 100-plus years of experience covering the Middle East from columnists such as Tom Friedman and Bret Stephens. Closer to home, colleagues like Maureen Dowd, Carlos Lozada, Jamelle Bouie and David French challenged conventional wisdom on American politics and policy, while Lydia Polgreen, Charles Blow and David Brooks asked essential questions about what society values and how to live a full life. Penetrating essays, poignant films and startling visuals by outside contributors only bolstered the Opinion report this past year.

We hope you enjoy the selection.

Standout columns

Charles Blow on coming out late in life.

Jamelle Bouie on Chief Justice John Roberts’s polite disdain for Congress.

David Brooks on his friend’s suicide.

Gail Collins on using humor as a tool in the women’s movement.

Ross Douthat on identity shifts in left-wing and right-wing politics.

Maureen Dowd on President Biden’s seventh grandchild.

Thomas Friedman on Israel’s need to be smart as it fights Hamas.

Zeynep Tufekci on the potential for an even deadlier pandemic.

And one piece from the Times editorial board: America has long been a young nation, but we will soon be old. We should take care to age gracefully.

Standout guest essays

• The TV journalist Connie Chung inspired a generation of Asian American women named after her. Connie Wang tells their stories.

• Jimmy Carter’s time in hospice is a lesson for a country that has long been uncomfortable with mortality, Dr. Daniela Lamas writes.

• Trump’s indictments are stoking Americans’ sense that his enemies in government are treating him unfairly, Rich Lowry writes.

• Palestinians record their suffering because they hope that doing so will humanize them, Hala Alyan writes.

• “My whole world”: Rachel Goldberg pleads for the safety of her son, Hersh, whom Hamas abducted from a music festival.

• Is this it?: Millennials are entering middle age, and their economic conditions aren’t what they expected, Jessica Grose writes.

• Prisoners with dementia challenge the argument that incarceration deters future crime, Katie Engelhart writes.

• These photos, by Josephine Sittenfeld, capture the fleeting magic of summer camp.

• How Twitter changed protest, news consumption and comedy, in 25 tweets.

• If anyone is going to tell the story of Pamela Anderson’s life, it’s going to be her, Jessica Bennett writes.

• This film does not exist: Frank Pavich explains how A.I. created images from a version of “Tron” that was never made.

• Trump’s success depends on his ability to portray himself as an unpredictable moderate, Matthew Schmitz argues.

Standout videos

THE LATEST NEWS

Donald Trump

Migration

Immersive: Streamers and TV networks are transforming shows into live experiences.

Covert mission: A private company wants to mine an asteroid — and keep the details secret.

Lives Lived: Wolfgang Schäuble played a key role in the reunification of East and West Germany and was once viewed widely as the heir apparent to Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Schäuble has died at 81.

SPORTS

N.F.L.: The Denver Broncos benched quarterback Russell Wilson. League sources say he is expecting to be cut from the team in March amid a contract dispute.

N.B.A.: Denver Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon will miss time after suffering injuries from a dog bite on Christmas.

ARTS AND IDEAS

Super fatigue: The amount of prior knowledge required to watch a show or movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe nowadays is tantamount to a college course — and audiences appear to be tiring of the homework assignments, the Times critic Maya Phillips writes. The films are increasingly “unimaginative, unremarkable and purely targeted to audiences already in the know,” Phillips writes, and after years of box office smashes, ticket sales are starting to dwindle.

More on culture

• Tom Smothers, whose groundbreaking show “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” upset the staid world of 1960s network TV with its sharp political comedy, has died at 86.

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