Updated, 6 p.m., to include the link to a separate post with Carolyn Ryan’s response.

For The Times, Bernie Sanders’s entry into the presidential race was almost a nonevent. Although many candidates’ declarations were treated on the front page with considerable fanfare, Mr. Sanders’s was tucked inside the paper on Page A21.

Since that time, the Vermont senator has received considerable attention from The Times, but for his supporters, not nearly enough. And the tone of the coverage, many complain, has sometimes been derogatory or dismissive, and has been focused on personality, not issues.

It’s not hard to understand the early news judgment at play here: Given Hillary Rodham Clinton as such a dominant candidate, with widespread support, lots of money and the Democratic Party’s likely imprimatur, almost any other Democratic candidate looked like an also-ran. And Mr. Sanders — whose politics are significantly left of center and who is 74 years old — didn’t appear to be the kind of candidate to change that view.

Since that announcement, I’ve heard a great deal from readers, unhappy about both quantity and tone of The Times’s stories. And Sanders articles have generated thousands of reader comments along the same lines.

“Is the Times planning on having fair coverage of Bernie Sanders – many of us like him – or is it just going to treat everyone but Hillary as a crank,” a reader, Joan McClusky, asked in an email.

In the past few days, I have looked back over the coverage, with the help of my assistant, Joumana Khatib.

First, some numbers. Mr. Sanders, since his announcement on April 30 until the end of August, has been the subject of 59 Times articles (opinion pieces are not included here, nor are wire-service reports). This includes not only those on the news pages of the paper but also those in such mainly online homes as The Upshot and First Draft. Of those, 12 have been straight news coverage. And five Sanders articles have been on the front page since he declared.

How does this compare with the coverage of some of the other candidates, particularly Mrs. Clinton? Looking at August alone, The Times ran 14 articles on Mr. Sanders, compared with 54 on Mrs. Clinton. Donald Trump – like Mr. Sanders, also considered by many an extreme long shot for his party’s nomination – got the most coverage last month: 63 articles. Other Republican candidates received far less ink than Trump: Jeb Bush was the subject of 18 articles in August, and Marco Rubio, 10. (Of course, not all press is good press for any of the candidates. In Mrs. Clinton’s case, for example, many of the August articles dealt with her questionable email practices as secretary of state.)

So, in terms of numbers alone, The Times certainly has not ignored Mr. Sanders. The Times did get off to a very slow start with its Sanders coverage but has responded as the crowds at his events have grown.

What about the tone and content of the Sanders coverage? This is what really frustrates most of the readers I’ve heard from. They want the candidate, and the issues he raises – particularly those concerning income inequality – to be taken seriously. Instead, they say, there’s too much snark and too much fluff.

The fluff may have reached its zenith — at least, one can always hope — with an exchange included in a Times Magazine interview. Not a part of the Times political coverage, it was by a well-known freelance contributor, Ana Marie Cox:

Do you think it’s fair that Hillary’s hair gets a lot more scrutiny than yours does?

Hillary’s hair gets more scrutiny than my hair?

Yeah.

Is that what you’re asking?

Yeah.

O.K., Ana, I don’t mean to be rude here. I am running for president of the United States on serious issues, O.K.? Do you have serious questions?

Many readers also found this passage in an Aug. 20 campaign trail article objectionable:

When a gaggle of reporters — “corporate media” in Sanders parlance — mentioned Mrs. Clinton here, he snarled, “That’s the sport you guys like,” meaning their focus on the kind of political questions he disdains. When asked to reconcile his anti-establishment status with being a “career politician,” Mr. Sanders, who except for two years has held political office continually since 1981, glared at the young reporter who asked the question.

“Career politician?” he said to her with a disdainful laugh. “Other questions.”

Constance Sullivan of Minneapolis wrote that it was “astonishingly inaccurate: “Sanders didn’t ‘snarl’ (I have seen the video clip). He typically responds calmly and with cool reason that tends to deflate a lot of self-important young reporters.”

Regina Schrambling of Manhattan (a former Times writer and editor) wrote to me complaining about an early headline on a piece about Mr. Sanders’s popularity on Facebook and Reddit. It read: “A Grumpy Old Socialist and Social Media Sensation.”

She couldn’t recall this sort of tone with any of the Republican “fringe candidates” as she put it. The article, too, she said, was dismissive.

“It seems the editors have decided the race already and have written him off,” she said.

Beyond the specifics of word choice, many readers have told me in emails and written in hundreds of passionate comments on news stories that they are deeply frustrated by coverage that doesn’t dig into the important issues plaguing the nation, particularly economic inequality and climate change.

And Dave Lippman of Teaneck, N.J., complained about a circular system of news, in which “fringe candidates are not deserving of respect because they don’t have support because the press doesn’t treat them with respect.”

It’s a given that Times editors and reporters must make news judgments about how much attention to give various candidates. That can vary widely. Since 2013, for example, The Times has assigned a reporter to cover Mrs. Clinton full time, arguably adding to her early anointment as the all-but-certain Democratic nominee, though many would argue that the coverage has been far from favorable.

Do these decisions merely recognize political reality or are they part of a self-perpetuating cycle in which someone like Bernie Sanders can never stand a chance?

On Tuesday, I asked Carolyn Ryan, the senior editor who heads The Times’s political coverage, for her response. I also sent her a summary of the numbers and the reader complaints. (Update: I published her response in a separate post.)

Here’s my take: The Times has not ignored Mr. Sanders’s campaign, but it hasn’t always taken it very seriously. The tone of some stories is regrettably dismissive, even mocking at times. Some of that is focused on the candidate’s age, appearance and style, rather than what he has to say.

And then there’s the Trump factor. While it may be realistic, and reflective of reasonable news judgment, to give Mr. Sanders less coverage than Mrs. Clinton, that’s certainly not happening with Donald Trump – whose every utterance and dust-up is breathlessly chronicled.

The Times’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, told me recently that he wants to focus more heavily on issue stories in the coming weeks and months. Candidates like Mr. Sanders – no matter how electable they are seen as – can and should be a part of that. Times readers are completely within their rights to expect and demand it.