Photo Credit: FRED R. CONRAD/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX
Jill Abramson (left) in The New York Times newsroom, June, 2011, following the announcement that she would succeed Bill Keller (center) as the paper’s executive editor. Looking on are recently appointed managing editor Dean Baquet (far right), and Abramson’s sister, Jane O’Connor (center right, in purple jacket).
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What a stunner.
Jill Abramson, ranked by Forbes Magazine in 2012 as the fifth most powerful woman in the world, and beginning in September, 2011, rising to become the first female executive editor in New York Times history, was unexpectedly dismissed and replaced by managing editor Dean Baquet, who will make history himself in becoming the first African-American in Times history to hold the top editors spot.
Abramson will not remain with company in any other capacity. “Jill is leaving The Times’’, company spokesperson Eileen Murphy wrote in an email. “No replacement has been named for Dean [Baquet] yet. ‘’
Caught completely off-guard, the Times newsroom learned of Abramson’s departure Wednesday afternoon at approximately 2:34 p.m., ET when the publisher of the Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., fired off a companywide email informing the staff of Abramson’s release.
``I am writing to announce a leadership change in the newsroom,’’ the email began. `Effective today’’, Sulzberger went on to write; “Dean Baquet will become our new executive editor, succeeding Jill Abramson. This appointment comes at a time when the newsroom is about to embark on a significant effort to transition more fully to a digital-first reality and where, across the organization, we are all learning to adapt to the rapid pace of change in our business.’’
According to Jackie Calmes, White House and fiscal policy reporter for the Times, “everyone was stunned; everyone.’’ “And despite it all’’, Calmes said, “no one at the Times that I'm aware of would deny that Jill is a great journalist. So is Dean. ‘’
In a company press release, Ms. Abramson said, “I've loved my run at The Times. I got to work with the best journalists in the world doing so much stand-up journalism. Holding powerful institutions accountable is the mission of The Times and the hallmark of my time as executive editor, whether stories about China, government secrecy, or powerful figures and corporations.”
Not only in the Times newsroom-but industry-wide the sacking of Abramson came as a shock.
Tina Brown, former editor of the New Yorker and the Daily Beast, and currently founder and CEO of Tina Brown Live Media, said: “Jill excelled I thought at putting powerful global narratives on the front page. Managing these big news organizations in the throes of digital revolution is a hell of a tough job to do.’’
Even at age 60, just five years away from the normal retirement age, at least at the Times, not many who know Abramson feel she’ll likely fade into the thin night air, never to be heard from again. The Times ``About New York’’ columnist Jim Dwyer thinks that “Jill has done great work and has many innings left in her arm.’’
Ironically, May is an inauspicious month for Abramson as well as the Times management.
In May, 2007, Abramson was hit by a truck at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and 44th Street, a painful experience, which landed her in Bellevue Hospital for three weeks after sustaining a broken femur and fractured hip and requiring several months of intensive physical therapy.
And it was exactly 11 years ago to the day, May 14, 2003, that The New York Times senior management held a town meeting to answer questions from staff members about the journalistic fraud committed by Jayson Blair; how such a sham happened in the first place, what steps were being taken to restore the confidence of the newsroom, and how it planned to repair the damage the scandal had inflicted on the Times as a news organization. Howell Raines, the executive editor, fielded a battery of tough questioning, the toughest coming from business reporter Alex Berenson, who asked whether he would resign. The publisher of the Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., quickly fired back that "he would not accept Mr. Raines's resignation even if offered."
In fact, Raines, along with managing editor Gerald M. Boyd, resigned on June 5, 2003, less than a month after the well publicized town hall meeting.
After the shock began to wear off Wednesday afternoon, a flurry of speculation filled the air as to the reasons for the abrupt leadership change.
According to an article posted by media critic Ken Auletta on the New Yorker’s website http://goo.gl/FyyeKl, Abramson became upset that her pay and pension benefits as managing editor and then as executive editor wasn't commensurate with her predecessor, Bill Keller. Her pay, according to the New Yorker, was considerably less. Auletta wrote: “She confronted the top brass,” one close associate said, and this may have fed into the management’s narrative that she was “pushy,” a characterization that, for many, has an inescapably gendered aspect. ''
According to the New Yorker, Sulzberger's frustration with Abramson has been gathering steam for some time, especially over advertising and his executive editor's continued annoyance over the business side intruding on editorial operations. Aueletta additionally quotes from an unnamed source, who claims Baquet (managing editor) found Abramson “hard to work with. ‘’
The latest New York Times article http://goo.gl/vXlDwr , reports that Mr. Sulzberger was getting a number of complaints from staff members, saying Abramson was “polarizing and mercurial.’’
Abramson came to the Times in 1997 and worked in its Washington bureau until 2000 before being named Washington bureau chief. In 2003, she was promoted to managing editor, a position she would remain in until 2011 when she succeeded Bill Keller as executive editor. Prior to landing at the Times, Abramson was a legal affairs and investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal from 1983 through 1993 and then Washington bureau chief though 1997.
During her tour of duty with the Wall Street Journal, Abramson covered the 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for U.S. Supreme Court associate justice nominee Clarence Thomas; the highly publicized hearing spiced with sexual innuendo, which led Abramson and another Journal reporter, Jane Mayer, to write “Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas." The book, based on original reporting, argued that sexual harassment did occur and "the preponderance of the evidence suggests" that Thomas lied under oath when he told the committee he had not harassed Anita Hill when both were working at the U.S. Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Abramson, born and raised in New York City, is married to Henry Little Griggs III, a writer, editor and media-relations consultant specializing in nonprofit advocacy campaigns. They have two children and are proud owners of a Golden Retriever, named Scout. They live in Tribeca.
-Bill Lucey
May 15, 2014
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