Jill Abramson, the first woman executive editor of The New York Times, was abruptly fired on Wednesday. Her singularity as a woman at the top of a legendary institution means that her firing is freighted with outsized meaning, precisely because there are still so few women and people of color occupying positions that were once the exclusive domain of white men. The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta, in a post published shortly after the news broke, suggested that Abramson had recently discovered that her pay and benefits package was lower than that of her predecessor, Bill Keller, and had pushed to rectify the discrepancy. Abramson’s insistence on this parity amplified an already established (but unattributed) internal critique that the direct, ambitious Abramson was “brusque” and “pushy,” characteristics not often attributed to male bosses. Those characterizations—coupled with some internal politics surrounding hirings in the Times expanding digital ventures—cemented Sulzberger’s decision to let her go. newrepublic/article/117767/jill-abramsons-firing-was-singularly-humiliating
Posted on: Thu, 15 May 2014 20:10:36 +0000
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