Ken Auletta, at the New Yorker “Why Jill Abramson Was Fired“:
At the annual City University Journalism School dinner, on Monday, Dean Baquet, the managing editor of the New York Times, was seated with Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the paper’s publisher. At the time, I did not give a moment’s thought to why Jill Abramson, the paper’s executive editor, was not at their table. Then, at 2:36 P.M. on Wednesday, an announcement from the Times hit my e-mail, saying that Baquet would replace Abramson, less than three years after she was appointed the first woman in the top job. Baquet will be the first African-American to lead the Times…
As with any such upheaval, there’s a history behind it. Several weeks ago, I’m told, Abramson discovered that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, as managing editor were considerably less than the pay and pension benefits of Bill Keller, the male editor whom she replaced in both jobs. “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… [T]o women at an institution that was once sued by its female employees for discriminatory practices, the question brings up ugly memories…
Sulzberger Junior: Fortunately, we have a Fungible Minority Token(tm) to throw into that gaping hole in our credibility! One assumes Mr. Basquet has hired top-quality legal assistance to examine his own contract with the NYTimes.
Business Insider has more.
And just a month ago RT @nytimes: Tips for women on how to ask for a raise http://t.co/tNH5IwCPZP
— Hadeel Al-Shalchi (@hadeelalsh) May 14, 2014
Brian R.
Unfuckingbelievable.
Catherine D.
And look how fast they call her an abrasive manager, a quality admired in males.
I’ve been beating the crap out of computers for more than 40 years and have heard all of this before. Scary that what I saw in middle school hasn’t changed much.
brettvk
It says something to me that a woman of the elite is still fighting the same discriminations that were identified when I was a young teenager. Us peasants expect sexism at our minimal wage jobs, but the daughters of the “meritocracy” are raised to believe their qualifications exempt them from this.
JPL
This is from Politco.. It seems as though pay wasn’t the issue..
maya
This is obviously a brilliantly conceived HRC assassination plot to counter Turdblossom’s “brain damage” smear while at the same time boosting her creds with female voters and their librul sidekicks for 2016 run. Only a fully functioning mind could come up with something as diabolical as this.
JGabriel
@Brian R.:
Au contraire. Sadly, it’s all too fucking believable.
Calouste
@JPL:
An NYT spokesperson via Politico… Excuse me for waiting for more information before I accept that particular line told there.
Tokyokie
@JPL: That would be the case for newsroom employees covered by the Newspaper Guild contract, but that does not include managers, especially the executive editor. It’s pretty sad that The Times is using Politico to launder its disingenuous statements.
Suffern ACE
Yay! This should end that internet fad once and for all.
Brian R.
@JGabriel:
Yeah, I said that to myself after hitting send.
Still….
Another Holocene Human
So many scumbags, so little time! They’re all bastards.
JPL
@Calouste: This is on Business Insider…
According to David Folkenflik’s twitter
I can now report that I have independently confirmed that Abramson did indeed challenge corporate brass over what she saw as unequal pay
gogol's wife
Would it be terrible of me to say I don’t think she was a great editor?
Another Holocene Human
@brettvk: Yup, look at the pay of that female that took over Yahoo!
Hyperprivileged. Paid less than the men.
Anne Laurie
@gogol’s wife: No, but it would sure be predictable.
nellcote
Way to be insulting to the respected Dean Baquet. Go google his termination at the LATimes.
Another Holocene Human
If men aren’t paid more then they can’t extort sex out of women, and then they might really get nasty. So you’d better be good to them.
the Conster
It’s like reading about a fight over who gets to sit in the nicest deck chair on the Titanic.
Omnes Omnibus
@gogol’s wife: No, and firing her for being a poor editor would be perfectly appropriate.
Another Holocene Human
@nellcote: So, who’s going to start the betting pool on how long HE lasts at NYT?
ETA: @the Conster: *gigglesnort*
gogol's wife
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t know what they fired her for.
Amir Khalid
As a former reporter, I don’t feel
a lot ofsympathy for editors myself. But to deny parity of pay for a managing editor, effectively the highest-ranking editorial staffer at the New York Times, on grounds of seniority — that smells a little hinky.gogol's wife
@Anne Laurie:
What is that supposed to mean?
Omnes Omnibus
@gogol’s wife: Nor do I. If it was for doing a poor job, cool. If it was for pushing for equal pay for equal work, not so cool.
nellcote
She should have been fired long ago for what she allowed Judith Miller to spew all over the front page of the NYT.
burnspbesq
@gogol’s wife:
Her qualifications and performance have been officially declared to be irrelevant. Get with the program.
@Anne Laurie:
No more predictable than your jumping to conclusions based on incomplete information, which is a daily occurrence.
Anne Laurie
@nellcote:
Not insulting Baquet, just Sulzberger, who’s got a history of ‘I can’t tell all those not-white-men apart’ footinmouthing.
nellcote
@Anne Laurie:
yes, you are and hiding behind Sulzberger to do it.
trollhattan
All this and Andrew Rosenthal (editorial page editor) still has a job? The hell, you say.
TooManyJens
@gogol’s wife: David Folkenflik from NPR described a number of factors, including pushing for equal pay, that created tension between Abramson and her bosses.
http://www.vox.com/2014/5/14/5718544/nprs-david-folkenflik-explains-jill-abramsons-downfall
Anne Laurie
@nellcote: Sure, which is why my next sentence was “One assumes Mr. Basquet has hired top-quality legal assistance to examine his own contract with the NYTimes.”
Omnes Omnibus
@trollhattan: It pays to have files full of compromising photos and info regarding your employer and other important people.*
*Wild and completely unsupported speculation.
gian
@nellcote:
I’m just imagining how AL would react to his immediate predecessor being referred to as a fungible token female.
I’ve no idea who is better qualified for the job, but I have doubt starting a left wing identity firing squad program to line up and choose sides will be an entertaining fight to read, but one I won’t get involved in.
If she was fired over gender based pay discrimination and can prove it, I expect there will be an unpleasant reckoning for the Times. If she “feels” that way but it’s not true, it’s a claim that will rally others to her side because in their memories it’s happened to them, or to people they know and love.
just like people might resent being called the “token minority”
Empathy, it’s not just for mute alien women in the old star trek show
burnspbesq
@nellcote:
Not sure why you’re trying to absolve Howell Raines of responsibility for that fiasco. He was the managing editor at the time, while Abramson was Washington bureau chief. If you know something about the editorial workflow at the Times during 2002-03 that supports your hypothesis that Abramson had effective editorial control over Miller at that time, please share, because this contemporaneous account suggests otherwise.
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/9226/index4.html
JGabriel
The Business Insider write-up, particularly David Folkenflik’s tweets appended at the end, is pretty informative. It looks like an amalgamation of turf wars, office backstabbing, sexism, with the pay issue being the final straw. Some highlights from Folkenflik’s twitter reports:
Also possibly relevant, from Auletta’s New Yorker piece:
jl
I’ve read that Keller was a good reporter once. But whenever I saw a clip of him, or something he wrote while editor, he seemed like an amiable mediocrity, and bit slow on his feet in debate or discussion. Difficult to see how any competent editor would be worth lower pay. But I guess not being ‘pushy’ is worth a lot in certain high toned corporate worlds.
Edit: guess what I was thinking is that if I were an editor who had a history of at least decent work, I would get ‘pushy’ if I found I was paid a lot less than Keller.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Bill Keller was executive editor for eight years. Abramson held that job for three years. Assuming that whoever holds the job gets periodic raises I can’t see why Abramson expected to be paid the same as Keller when she had less than half the years that he had in that job.
aimai
@nellcote: You know I really don’ tthink thats fair. Its obvious that if they underpaid Abrahamson because she’s a woman they are going to underpay Basquet because he’s black. And they are going to expect him to like it and be grateful because he’s “first” at the Times. This says nothing and implies nothing about his work as a reporter and an editor, just like htey didn’t underpay her because she wasn’t as good as the white male editor she replaced. They did it because they could.
Omnes Omnibus
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Could be that she saw starting pay data. At this point, we don’t know.
gian
@JGabriel:
she may be right about over-doing video. If you’ve ever perused comments in a “news story” that links not to writing, but to a video report, where it’s not obviously a video, a lot of people complain that they’d rather read the story than watch it (especially on mute in their cubicle at work)
rikyrah
you can count on Ken Auletta to get the lowdown of any story happening in the media.
JGabriel
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Experience based pay is to incentivize people working up the ladder. Once you’re at the top of the chain, as Abramson was on the news side, then you get paid for your responsibilities.
Another way of putting it is that once you work your way to high executive level, you get paid for the value of your work, responsibilities, and ability to do the job, not the number of years it took you to get there.
Pension accrual is a different matter, but Abramson’s expectation to be paid as well as Keller was entirely reasonable.
rikyrah
my thing is…didn’t she know when she first negotiated her contract, what the other folks were paid?
and, if not, why not?
just askin’.
3 years is a long time to just be ‘ finding out’.
JGabriel
@gian:
And I’m among them. I find it very irritating to click through to a story, only to have the video autostart with no available text, and consequently no choice to read the text instead.
rikyrah
does the new guy have more experience than Abramson?
just askin’.
rikyrah
Who is Dean Baquet? 6 Facts About the New York Times’ First Black Executive Editor
He’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who was once fired from the Los Angeles Times after refusing to make staff cuts. More on his background here.
By: The Root Staff
Posted: May 14 2014 4:02 PM
Here are six things to know:
1. He’s no stranger to the New York Times. Baquet, 57, was the newspaper’s managing editor—a role he’d held since 2012. From 1995 to 2000, he was national editor of the New York Times. Between those two stints at the NYT, he served as editor of the Los Angeles Times.
2. He was fired from the Los Angeles Times after refusing to make extensive staff cuts ordered by its publisher.
3. He’s a Pulitzer Prize winner. He earned the honor for investigative reporting (in the form of a piece on corruption in the Chicago City Council) back in 1998. He’s also taken home the Peter Lisagor Award for investigative reporting and the William H. Jones award for investigative reporting.
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/05/who_is_dean_baquet_6_facts_about_the_new_york_times_first_black_executive.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content&mc_cid=fb62eee593&mc_eid=1e0cf17cc4
JGabriel
@rikyrah:
They both have plenty of experience. Abramson was at the Wall St. Journal for years before she joined the Times.
But to answer your question directly: No.
Baquet went into journalism in 1978, giving him roughly 36 years experience. Abramson has worked in journalism since 1973, giving her 41 years experience.
Edited to Add: Also, it appears Baquet doesn’t have a college degree, having dropped out of Columbia after a few years in 1978. Abramson was graduated from Harvard in ’76.
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: Baquet:
Abramson:
Pretty equivalent, if you ask me. Although Baquet has already been the editor at a good sized paper.
Cacti
When there’s internal fighting at the NYT, I just root for injuries.
Gin & Tonic
@Cacti: Unfortunately the injured never include anyone named Sulzberger.
lahke
@rikyrah:
But it’s the whole point of the Lily Ledbetter case–that secret pay data (and companies that fire you for trying to find out) support sexist pay structures.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
Being able to find out if there discrepancies in pay based on gender without facing retaliation is what the Paycheck Fairness Act would do.
Morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s hard to think of anything that made her tenure as editor particularly distinguished. Then again, if you want distinguished editors (and, alas, journalists) you probably don’t make the NYT your first read of the day.
Ken Adler
Ms. Abraham obviously did not follow these rules before asking for her raise
http://jezebel.com/5622968/how-to-ask-for-a-raise-first-wash-your-vagina
TS
@JGabriel:
Yet this is the big positive for the fans of Gov Christie
Villago Delenda Est
Uppity beeyotches need to be put in their place, yo!
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
And sammiches, never forget the sammitches, yo!
mai naem
Abramson is not an idiot. I doubt she was asking for more money not taking time at her job into account. I am guessing they were paying her less. At the same time, you have to take into consideration that the NYT’s finances are even worse than they were during Keller’s stint. Also too, WP just pulled the plug on their WP TV experiment. I am sure Sulzberger was looking at that.
glasnost
This attack on the NYT involves a lot of jerking knees. The very story that broke this also says, to its credit, something like “Sources say Sulzberger believed around 2009 that management pay needed to be cut”. That’s more than plausible. It’s very, very, very rational. In fact, it’s laudable. Extremely laudable. Honestly, Sulzburger deserves a goddamn medal for showing some basic human decency and cutting management pay instead of forcing literally one hundred percent of the expense cuts onto ordinary employees like every other douchebag executive on earth.
So at the same time he’s performing this suprisingly decent act of cutting management pay alongside all the cuts falling on employees, he also decides he wants to hire a woman.
And for this, he gets witch hunted, because falling management pay happening in the same period of time as hiring a non whitemale is *by definition* racism, sexism, or somethingism, right?
Confuckingradulations on making it impossible to both cut management pay and diversify management without being assumed to be a somethingist. Those are two things both desperately needed, they’re going to have some overlap. Best not to assume the immediate worst about it when that happens.
burnspbesq
@glasnost:
Of course it does. It’s evening, and this is Balloon-Juice.
The rest of your comment is either poorly executed snark or an incomprehensible argument. Or both.
Villago Delenda Est
@glasnost: It’s Sulzberger. Of course we’re going to assume the immediate worst. It’s what his family fucking DOES.
JaneE
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Most places I worked, the new hires always made more money than the equivalent old-timers. They called it wage compression. A new hire would negotiate their starting salary. If it wasn’t high enough, they would go elsewhere, so to recruit good help, you had to pay market wages. Raises were never as big a percentage as the year over year increase in hiring rates. The longer you stayed, the further behind the market wage rate. By the time I became a supervisor, it was hard not to laugh at people with two or three years experience expecting a starting salary $10k higher than mine, or my boss’. And of course all the want-ads said salary commensurate with experience.
glasnost
It’s also reasonable to cut management pay when your company’s revenue is collapsing. More than reasonable, actually. Laudable. And we’re appropriately enraged when all too often, it doesn’t happen because, hey, dump all the cuts on the workers! Eat that cake!
But in this case, because the laudable thing was done at the same time they chose to hire something other than a white male – another laudable thing – it becomes obvious sexism.
That’s not only an unworkable standard, it’s wildly counterproductive. Just what the world’s executives need, another reason not to cut management pay, all the worse for being a) a semivalid reason (in the sense of, this negative consequence will actually happen, not in the sense that it really justifies the behavior) and b) our fault (the reason here is “we can’t cut management pay, we just hired a nonwhitemale, we’re going to get railroaded for somethingism”.)
It would be a completely different story if they were paying Abramson less than other employees of the same rank *at the same time*. Paying different wages to the same position at different points in time is a constant feature of necessary business management, and in this case, exactly the example of responsible management we’re dying to find.
This isn’t evidence of sexism, it’s just master-class dog-whistling to our tribal biases, succceeding. The first time in recent history someone actually cuts management pay, and we fuck up the reaction because identity issues fuck up our thinking.
Omnes Omnibus
@glasnost: It isn’t evidence of not-sexism either. We don’t have all of the facts yet.
Sloegin
We’re cutting management pay! — So claimed the Washington state Republican party when the new chair of the party (Susan Hutchison) had a spat with the state GOP in 2013 due to her pay of $75,000 per year vs. the paycheck of her predecesor Kirby Wilbur, who made $95,000 per year.
Kirby was chair (before being replaced by Hutchison) for about a year and a half.
Eric U.
@glasnost: Keller is still there and being paid quite a bit for crappy column he should be fired for. That’s a really good place to start saving money
jon
The pay gap for women is a myth. The pay gap for women is a myth. The pay gap for women is a myth. The pay gap for women is a myth. The pay gap for women is a myth. The pay gap for women is a myth. The pay gap for women is a myth. The pay gap for women is a myth. The pay gap for women is a myth. The pay gap for women is a myth. The pay gap for women is a myth. The pay gap for women is a myth. The pay gap for women is a myth. The pay gap for women is a myth. The pay gap for women is a myth.
Is it true yet?
MBunge
@JGabriel: “Pension accrual is a different matter, but Abramson’s expectation to be paid as well as Keller was entirely reasonable.”
If the financial situation of the NYT is truly on the decline, getting paid as much as the person who came before you might be debatable. There’s no way getting paid less than a subordinate can be excused.
Mike
Ramart
Perhaps in a more economically pessimistic post-recessionary climate three years ago, the NYT dealt realistically with print media’s fading fortunes by commensurately right-sizing the pay scale of the executive-editor position. And perhaps the NYT now feels it can afford better services in that key role. Or maybe the budget’s unchanged. Whatever. It’s Sulzberger’s candy store, and, generally speaking, he makes pretty tasty candy. Buh-bye, Jill.