Fellow New Yorkers — and everyone who ever clicked on one of our breathless “hot takes” —

We owe you an apology.

What we should have done is obvious now: more humility, more skepticism of our own hot takes, more on-the-ground reporting and far fewer late-night thinkpieces written with cold pizza and too much certainty.

To Zohran Mamdani, his team, and the voters who made a different choice than we predicted: we apologize. We promise to do better. Not performatively, not for the optics, but with real work: better sourcing, clearer labeling of opinion vs. reporting, and — crucially — fewer headlines that assume the future before it's actually happened.

We are thankful that democracy keeps us honest — and humiliated by the reminder that being loud is not the same as being right. Thank you to the voters, the volunteers, and the people who go door to door. And to our readers: if you want to yell at us (and you should), we’ll answer. If you want to keep us honest, keep reading — and keep calling us out when we get it wrong.