The smallest points were scrutinized. Why, for example, did The Times use so many descriptions of Mr. Zimmerman’s ethnicity? Michael G. Brautigam of Brooklyn is one of many readers who commented on how The Times described Mr. Zimmerman. He wrote to me: “If memory serves, George Zimmerman has been described in a significantly different way each day of the week.” A week ago Monday he was labeled “half Hispanic,” the next day as “half Peruvian,” a day later as “self-described Hispanic.” Earlier, he was described as a “white Hispanic.”

I asked Ms. Alvarez to explain. “It’s been a struggle all along,” she said. “If he were black or if his name was Rodriguez instead of Zimmerman, this would have been a completely different situation.” The case would not have had its racial flash point, she said. In a nation where a blend of race and ethnicity are more and more the norm, the labeling struggle is an effort to note that Mr. Zimmerman shares in that mixture more than his name alone indicates.

Separately from news coverage, some readers complained about several Op-Ed columns by Charles Blow, finding them one-sided, with a particular complaint about one that appeared on July 3, comparing Mr. Zimmerman’s videotaped re-enactment with his written and spoken statements. Richard Murphy of Fairfield, Conn., wrote: “I realize that Mr. Blow is an opinion columnist, but does The Times really want to put Mr. Zimmerman on trial in its pages? Mr. Blow isn’t reporting, he is deliberately attempting to discredit Zimmerman, to convince people of his guilt.”

I sent this complaint to Mr. Blow and asked him to respond. “I simply raised questions about inconsistencies in George Zimmerman’s accounts of his struggle with Trayvon Martin,” he said.

Looking back over the columns that Mr. Blow has written on the case since last year, I found them generally thoughtful, if clearly sympathetic to the Martin family. The column that Mr. Murphy cited may have come close to the limits of fair comment, taking on a prosecutorial tone. If you believed the medical examiner, the columnist wrote, “the struggle simply couldn’t have happened as Zimmerman described it.” Those kinds of judgments might have been best left to the jury. But columnists are allowed wide leeway, and even in this instance I found Mr. Blow within his rights.

The Times was slow off the mark on this story, and on some early developments, it let the local media break the news. But over all, it has done its job, satisfying interest without sensationalizing, covering the trial with a measured tone, and providing depth and perspective — valuable commodities on a story all too capable of creating hysteria.