A Reader Project on Opinion Journalism

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First, Democrats had another strong night at the polls last night. Yes, their candidate in an Arizona special House election lost, by five percentage points. But don’t be distracted by that. The district is overwhelmingly Republican.

The Arizona result — along with several state-legislature races in New York — is consistent with that of dozens of other special elections so far this year and last year: Democrats are running far, far ahead of their 2014 and 2016 showings. Their performance suggests they are more likely to retake the House than not.

Of course, there is still a lot that could happen between now and November.

Reader project. A couple of weeks ago, I asked readers of this newsletter: Which political views that you disagree with do you nonetheless want to read? And on social media, I asked a related question: Which views are underrepresented in the national media? In both cases, I also asked which views readers considered beyond the pale of productive debate.

The issue has obviously been in the news lately. Some Times readers have been upset by a couple of recently hired conservative writers here. The Washington Post faced similar criticism for its hiring of the libertarian-leaning Megan McArdle. And The Atlantic hired and — after a debate over his support for executing women who have had abortions — fired the writer Kevin Williamson.

Nearly a thousand of you replied to my questions. Both I and my colleagues are grateful for the thoughtfulness of so many of the responses. We’ve now published an article about your thoughts, with extensive quotes.

There were a few main themes:

1. The national media should expand the boundaries of the debate.

2. There should be more conservative arguments, especially the nonelite conservatism that helps explain Trump’s rise.

3. The media has many center-left voices. It needs more unabashedly left-wing voices.

4. The media’s voices are too male, too white, too privileged and too American.

5. Some positions don’t deserve a national platform.

But don’t just rely on my quick description. Read for yourself what readers have to say.

Technical difficulty. I know that some of you received yesterday’s newsletter late — and received a duplicate copy when it did arrive. I apologize. We believe we know what went wrong and have fixed the bug. Don’t hesitate to send me a note — leonhardt@nytimes.com — if future delivery problems happen.