After taking a public relations drubbing for days over his handling of the firing of New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, the Times publisher has given his first interview on the imbroglio that has engulfed the nation's top news organization.
Declaring "I'm not going to let lies like this lie," Sulzberger outlined for Vanity Fair's Sarah Ellison the chain of events that led to his decision to fire Abramson. And he portrayed Abramson's managerial deficiencies as so profound that despite her journalism strengths, retaining her was not an option.
Sulzberger was emphatic in rejecting the meme that has been most damaging to him and the paper, one that emerged shortly after Abramson's beheading last Wednesday: that she learned that she was being paid less than her male predecessor, Bill Keller, and that her decision to lawyer up over the issue was a key factor in her ouster. Moments after that proposition was asserted by New Yorker media writer Ken Auletta late Wednesday afternoon, Abramson's image rapidly morphed from rough, cold leader to sex-discrimination victim.
"There is no truth to the charge" that Abramson, the first woman to serve as the Times' executive editor, was paid less than Keller, Sulzberger, who is also chairman of the New York Times Co., said in the interview. He added that after she joined the Times Co. executive committee in 2013, her total compensation package – salary, bonus, stock – was 10% higher than Keller's had been in 2010, his last year as the Times' executive editor.
REM RIEDER: A bravura performance by Jill Abramson
In the interview, conducted Sunday and posted early Tuesday morning, Sulzberger made clear he was suffering from an acute case of buyer's remorse. In 2011, after Keller resigned, Sulzberger chose Abramson over Dean Baquet, the man he named to succeed her last week in the Times newsroom's top job. If he could do it over again, "Of course I would have done it differently,! " Sulzberger said.
Sulzberger conceded the obvious, that the Times had published excellent work under Abramson, who is highly regarded for her journalistic chops. But he portrayed her managerial shortcomings as a severe problem, so severe that in January 2014 he gave her what Vanity Fair characterizes as a "stark" performance review, and the paper's human resources department helped her find an executive coach.
Sulzberger said Abramson was often absent from the newsroom and had a tendency to make decisions without informing colleagues. Tellingly, he said, her relationship with managing editor Baquet, her top deputy, and other key newsroom editors had become "very frayed."
It has been widely reported, based on anonymous sources, that Abramson's demise stemmed directly from her efforts to woo The Guardian's Janine Gibson to become the Times' co-managing editor for digital. In the interview, Sulzberger discussed in detail how that played out.
The key problem was that Abramson never told Baquet that she planned to give Gibson a rank equal to his. When he learned from Gibson over lunch May 5 that that was the case, he wasn't happy. "When Janine told Dean that she'd been offered the job of co-managing editor, he didn't have a clue," Sulzberger said.
Two days later, the two men had dinner, and Sulzberger said he learned "the severity of his feelings."
"At that point, we risked losing Dean, and we risked losing more than Dean," Sulzberger told Ellison. "It would have been a flood, and a flood of some of our best digital people."
Baquet, who has the people skills Abramson lacks, is a popular figure in the Times newsroom. Sulzberger said a number of people in the newsroom had told him, "The one person we cannot lose is Dean Baquet."
On Friday, May 9, Sulzberger told Abramson it was time for a change. Five days later, with Abramson nowhere to be seen, the publisher announced the leadership change.
On Monday, Abramson gave a well-received commencement address at! Wake For! est University in which she described the Times as an "important and irreplaceable institution" and said there was "not a chance" that she would have the tattoo of the New York Times "T" on her back removed.
No comments:
Post a Comment