interesting throughout. speaking of, the gap between the Times’s coverage of Glenn Thrush and its coverage of Ali Watkins is pretty telling https://t.co/NownyAyIkI
— Owen Ellickson (@onlxn) June 28, 2018
Remember, Abramson was fired by the FTFNYT because she was perceived as “pushy.” That certainly hasn’t been a problem with her replacement, Dean Baquet. But the lady is correct, once again…
… “Kind of pisses me off that @ nytimes is still asking Who Is Ocasio-Cortez? when it should have covered her campaign,” Jill Abramson erupted on Twitter on Wednesday morning—a biting reference to the newspaper’s original headline concerning the 28-year-old socialist’s shocking Democratic primary upset, a landslide actually, over incumbent Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th Congressional District…
“Missing her rise [is] akin to not seeing Trump’s win coming in 2016,” Abramson added in her tweet—an even more biting reference to the Times’ self-acknowledged failings in the paper’s reporting of the presidential campaign.
In response to Abramson’s critique—which she elaborated in several emailed comments shared with the Times—Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told The Daily Beast: “We have enormous respect for Jill and deeply appreciate her passion. Criticism and feedback helps us do better work and we’re always open to it. On these specifics though, we just disagree with Jill.” A few hours after Abramson’s tweet, the headline phrase that pissed her off, “Who is Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez?” was changed online to “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: A 28-Year-Old Democratic Giant Slayer.”…
Abramson, 64, famously held [the executive editor] job for nearly three years—the first and only woman to do so—until she was summarily sacked amid an unseemly public-relations melee in May 2014…
“I fear sounding like a jealous old-timer. I’ve resisted critiquing the place publicly, but this shit is bad,” Abramson wrote in an email to this reporter, in which she elaborated on her tweet…
… [T]he NYT… it’s making horrible mistakes left and right. Here are a few:
“Not covering the ‘stunning’ upset of Joe Crowley. It’s the NYT that was undeservedly stunned, letting down its readers.
“That horrible 3,000-word exposé on Ali Watkins [the Times reporter who’s caught up in a leak investigation involving her ex-boyfriend, a former top staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee] that aired her sex life and conflicts while not probing why she was hired, responsibility of editors, or, most crucially, the value of her journalism (her Carter Page scoop in BuzzFeed actually helped lead to appt of Mueller)…
“Decision by international and new TV show plan to focus on personal feelings and experiences of NYT journalists covering news.
“More narcissism: It’s always about us. Yikes. Distance is part of journalism’s discipline.
“They need a course correction.
“Am I wrong?”…
So, tell me: What exactly do Jill Abramson, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ali Watkins have in common? Do you suppose the Grey Lady’s current elites might just have a tiny wee bit of a problem with women who don’t know their place?
schrodingers_cat
Traitor Times is all in, on the Don in WH.
Elizabelle
Somebody is shooting up a newsroom in Annapolis, MD? The Capital Gazette.
WaPost in entirety:
Betty Cracker
I was with her until she lauded Baquet. He’s clearly part of the problem.
Elizabelle
Didn’t read it, but if so, Baquet is a disaster hire.
Although: popular among journalists, and it was not obvious he was such a Vichy enabler when he was hired.
Baquet as prisoner of the Sulzberger publisher’s suite?
Mary G
The New Yorker has a video interview with Baquet and Haberman. I tried to watch it, but I would have broken my monitor screen after 5 minutes. Baquet is the snobbiest know-it-all and just ugh. They also have a series on Showtime that’s supposed to be reality TV like, but nope.
Elizabelle
From the Baltimore Sun, just now:
Could be domestic violence, workplace violence, or …
Elizabelle
New thread, by Adam, on the Capital Gazette shooting
Suspect in custody, building cleared.
Anne Laurie
@Betty Cracker: The second Abramson says anything less than complementary about Baquet, it turns into an OMG WHITE LADY MUST BE A RACIST!!! display by the (overwhelmingly white) pearl-clutchers at the NYTimes and their supporters.
Go look at the 2014 coverage, including the comments on this here blog. Crab Bucket Politics 101: Make it clear that there can only be one successful Model Minority Token at any institution, and scream like scalded weasels if all competitors to this year’s “award winner” don’t shut up and go away.
Mary G
Mostly women, a heartening sight:
(Deleted some hashtags to avoid moderation: We Care Abolish ICE Women Disobey
NotMax
Always been impressed by Ms Abramson’s intelligence and professionalism.
But have you ever heard her speak? Lawdy, she makes Fran Drescher sound like Hyacinth Bucket. Like a thousand fingernails scraping in unison on a blackboard.
Barry
@Elizabelle: “Baquet as prisoner of the Sulzberger publisher’s suite?”
It’s beginning to look like the single most pivotal fact of the post-Cold War era is that the Sulzberger family hated the Clinton family.’
Brachiator
Jill Abramson, Dean Baquet, Howell Raines and Bill Keller were all shitty NY Times editors, and all of them up to Baquet were ultimately fired or resigned. The publishers do not know how to hire and nurture talented, competent people. There is also a strange working environment at the Times, where staffers can passively (and actively) undermine and act independently of editors. Horrible workplace.
@Elizabelle:
He was a fuck-up at the LA Times, even though he “stood up” for the reporters when the ownership wanted to make deep staffing cuts.
ETA: Both Abramson and Baquet are good reporters.
Mnemosyne
Exhibit A: the book that was ostensibly about following Hillary’s campaign that the NYT lauded as a “rom-com” about Amy Chozik’s life. Somebody didn’t know what her own fucking JOB was supposed to be and instead chronicled her own funny misadventures.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I think Abramson and Baquet are both examples that good reporters don’t necessarily make for good managers. It’s become kind of a truism in my corner of the Giant Evil Corporation that animators generally don’t make very good directors, but story artists do.
Aimai
@NotMax: Christ–can we not get through a single post about a prominent woman without some man telling us that she just doesn’t sound like a woman should?
rikyrah
Thread
Adam Jentleson ? (@AJentleson) Tweeted:
The first thing all Dems need to do is get a firm mental grip on the new rules.
McConnell annihilated every norm of the nomination process to deny Garland a hearing or vote and steal the Court for a generation.
If you play by the old rules, you’re playing a fool’s game. https://twitter.com/AJentleson/status/1012042524561690625?s=17
TenguPhule
@rikyrah: If the rumor about Schumer promising to bring back the filibuster if we take the majority is true, he’s done.
Fuck Civility.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Yep. However, I note that Abramson was apparently a good bureau chief at the Times and the Wall Street Journal. But as I noted, there’s a weird environment at the NY Times, where staffers seem to be able to undermine the executive and managing editors.
This brings to mind the recent promotions of Pete Docter and Jennifer Lee at Pixar. I’ve heard that Docter reluctantly accepted the promotion.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Docter’s job is going to be a LOT harder than Lee’s, because he’s going to have to deal with the entrenched problems with gender and other discrimination at Pixar. There’s been sufficient management upheaval in our little corner in the last 10-15 years that Lee will not have to deal with as much of that.
(There is still more than there should be, but less than there is at Pixar, and not as institutionalized.)
NotMax
@Aimai
Being a woman has nothing to do with it. Were she a he, or a sexless digitally produced voice for that matter, the extra-thick Noo Yawk twang would be just as grating.
Aleta
@Mary G: He comes across as a proud sociopath in that interview IMO.
NotMax
@Aimai
My ancient Mom has said she changes the channel whenever Abramson is on because she cannot abide that voice. Does that work better for you?
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
I wish them both great success. It was very hard to read a first person account of the harassment going on at the company.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@NotMax: She definitely has a voice for print.
Trabb's Boy
@NotMax: Saying you can’t stand a woman’s voice is genuinely sexist. There is lots of subconscious stuff going on with it. We all grew up in a society that treats the male voice as authoritative and the female voice as complainy. It is one of the many things that keeps women down. If you give a shit about equality, you make an effort to listen to words over pitch and tone to make up for that, and you don’t say shitty things about a woman’s voice just because of this history and the fact that it is something that women don’t have the ability to really change.
I know you are going to respond that it’s just her accent, and you point out that you heard it from a woman too (your mother). But like I said, if you give a shit, don’t.
namekarB
Speaking of journalistic narcissism, I was listening to PRX (Public Radio Exchange) interviewing interviewers on how to conduct an interview. (I kid you not). So I changed over to NPR (National Public Radio) which featured an interview with another interviewer. I turned the radio off. The reason I listen to PRX and NPR is to get away from that mentality of how important journalists need to strut their stuff.
Furthermore, how come public radio is geared toward the elites? Example: NPR has a daily program “Marketplace” for investors but don’t have a program called “Workplace” for the majority of Americans. Very telling.
End of rant.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Yep. From what I’ve seen in the trades, it’s not even that what the former head was doing himself that was so bad — it was that the fact that he got away with it opened the door for other people to be openly and/or covertly discriminatory and harassing and employees had no recourse because hey, that’s just the way it is here — look at the big guy.
It pretty much became a textbook case of a hostile work environment because of what was tolerated from senior management even though senior management was not the worst of it.