Using the n-word did not end Donald McNeil's storied career at the Times. His incuriosity did

Issac J. Bailey has the last word on issues of journalism, not wokeness.

It wasn’t the utterance of the n-word that ended Donald McNeil’s career with The New York Times. It was his incuriosity about maybe the most important story of our time, his comfort wrapped in a kind of blinkered ignorance, that likely did him in.

I’m not talking about the pandemic, for which McNeil’s reporting has been rightly praised and may net him a…