From the Public Editor’s blog:

In my column on Sunday April 10, I described the complex, fast-moving environment in which The Times’s foreign desk reports developments online and in print. A further challenge to journalists on the desk is deciding how to prioritize the news, especially given the volume and urgency of news in the current climate. While one might argue that in the digital medium there is unlimited space for news, in print the situation is different. The recent case of the retraction of a key assertion by Richard Goldstone, the South African jurist who led a panel investigating Israel’s invasion of Gaza two years ago, is a case in point.
The Times published its story on the retraction on page A10 of its late editions on Sunday April 3. Numerous readers emailed the public editor to complain that The Times had buried the story, especially in view of the fact that the initial report on the Goldstone panel’s findings two years earlier was placed on Page One.
The complaining readers’ view was simple enough: if you publish a damaging allegation on the front page, you should publish evidence to the contrary in the same place. The premise has special meaning in print, where contents live in place forever (or at least until dust truly goes to dust). Online, editors have endless opportunities to shuffle content, if they wish.
I queried Susan Chira, the foreign editor, about the decision to place the Goldstone retraction story on Page A10. The circumstances she described were anything but cut and dried. The primary complicating factor was a story by The Times’s Ethan Bronner, bureau chief in Jerusalem, saying that Israel was under new pressure to make a “far-reaching offer” to the Palestinians or face the prospect that the United Nations may vote to make the State of Palestine a UN member. Such a move would place Israel in the position of occupying lands belonging to a UN member state.
Top Times editors decided to place this story, which was written and edited before The Times became aware of the Goldstone retraction, prominently on page one for the next day’s paper, Sunday April 3. Ms. Chira told me she considered the piece to be a “conceptual scoop” that was exclusive to The Times. In other words, Mr. Bronner’s story, which was run as an analytical piece under the tag “Diplomatic Memo,” offered new insight into the long-running conflict, in The Times’s view.

The rest here.