Most newspaper editorials don’t generate a great deal of heat. Even fewer can be considered newsworthy.

The exception was one in The Times on Thursday, calling for Edward J. Snowden to be offered clemency or a plea bargain. By midday, it had already drawn well over 1,200 online comments, as well as articles about it in other media outlets, including Politico, Fox News, The Nation, and USA Today.

Andrew Rosenthal, The Times’s editorial page editor, told me Thursday that the editorial had been under discussion by the editorial board for weeks. The Times has written strong editorials about Mr. Snowden ever since the former contractor for the National Security Agency emerged into the national consciousness last spring. In general, The Times’s editorial page has supported Mr. Snowden, calling him a whistle-blower who has done a public service for American citizens by revealing vast – and unconstitutional – government surveillance.

But the moment for something larger arrived more recently, Mr. Rosenthal said.

“It felt like there was a real critical mass,” he said, with recent rulings by federal judges, Congress’s bipartisan consideration of legal changes, the recommendations of a panel appointed by President Obama, and the unified statement of protest by Internet companies, who are not normally great champions of privacy.

“With all of that, and year ending, it seemed like a great moment to say it,” he said.

The editorial’s general stance, as usual, was agreed upon by the board and assigned to a lead writer, with contributions from others. (Mr. Rosenthal did not write this editorial, although he does occasionally write editorials in addition to a regular blog.) An editorial in The Guardian has also called for a pardon.

The Times’s editorial has garnered praise from some – and some notable vitriol from others, he said.

“Sadly, many of those have been obscene and hate-filled,” he said. They include very strongly worded ad hominem attacks both on Mr. Snowden and on Mr. Rosenthal, he said. He read me one particularly vicious example, which I won’t reproduce here.

“We did say that the idea of political asylum,” advanced by some, “is bizarre.” And, he noted, that Mr. Snowden “seems to have violated his security clearance.”

As for the extremely politicized nature of the response – with support for Mr. Snowden coming largely from the left – Mr. Rosenthal said that, by rights, “conservatives should be the most outraged” because of the intrusion of government that they normally oppose.

The most heartening response, he said, was from readers who said that The Times’s editorial “had forced them to sit down and really consider what they thought.” For some, at least, the editorial brought about “more textured thinking” on a difficult subject.

Does Mr. Rosenthal really think President Obama will take the board’s highly unusual recommendation seriously?

“That’s anybody’s guess,” he said, noting that the pressure on the president is intense by all sides. He added, “We have been very disappointed with him on these issues.”

“Sometimes,” he added, “you have to go beyond what is realistic” in an editorial recommendation, not necessarily saying what might happen but rather, “this is what should happen.”

Like The Times’s editorial board, I believe that Mr. Snowden has done the United States, and in fact, the world, a great service.

I agree wholeheartedly with this line in the editorial’s concluding paragraph: “When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of the same government.”