NEW YORK—James Bennet, The New York Times editor with the final word on the editorial at the heart of the newspaper’s defamation lawsuit by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (R), testified in federal court on Feb. 9 that soon after it was posted on the newspaper’s website on June 14, 2017, he read criticisms of it by conservative writers on Twitter. The tweets came as a surprise to him. Bennet testified that he never intended the piece to blame Palin for a 2011 mass shooting that was referenced, or her political action committee (SarahPAC), in the editorial. Bennet received an email from conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat at 10:35 that night. Douthat expressed his concerns with the perception of the piece and included links to two separate tweets that were critical of it. One was from Jonathan Chait, a writer for New York magazine, and the other was …