What there's no precedent for is the most respected news source in the country covering a traitorous insurrectionist, convicted rapist and felon as if he's a legitimate candidate for the highest office in the country.

Somewhere in the last ten years, the media flipped the script on its responsibility to the public. Maybe because of social media? Now Trump's "popularity" makes him a viable candidate, just as both-sides-ing controversial topics is now the standard way of "reporting" rather than stating known facts. It's as if eating Tide pods was covered as the hot new trend, with "some saying" it may be dangerous. Or, more to the point, the way the media pretended that there wasn't factual evidence that smoking causes cancer for 50 years or more (because most American media was majorly funded by tobacco vompanies). 

In their efforts to maintain viewership, clicks and eyeballs, the NYT (and virtually every other American news outlet) sold out their readership by normalizing and sanewashing white rural rage, racism and anti-government conspiracy. These late-in-the-game pearl clutching pieces are too little, too late, perhaps intentionally. 