One thing is clear: Jill Abramson is not the worst manager at the New York Times. Let the shell-shocked media editor David Carr put the whole thing in perspective:
But none of that was as surreal as what happened last week. When the Times*’s publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., stood up at a hastily called meeting in the soaring open newsroom where we usually gather to celebrate the Pulitzers and said that Jill was out, we all just looked at one another. How did our workplace suddenly become a particularly bloody episode of “Game of Thrones”?
OK, so Artie looks, and acts, like an idiot, and Jill once called the Obama Administration the least transparent in history, which was (and is) absolutely true, but let’s pause a minute to recall a few of the things that Jill did while drawing a maybe big, maybe not so big, paycheck.
She started off as NYT exec editor by writing a series of articles about her dog Scout—her “fucking dog,” as I believe I put it, in a regrettable outburst of pajama pundit pique. She then collected these articles and published them in a book. I’m not from New York, but even I am cynical enough to suspect that a major New York publishing house might be “happy” to offer the NYT exec ed a fat advance for such a book. To put additional icing on the cake, the Times published two (count ‘em, two!) highly positive reviews of Jill’s masterpiece.
Later, in a contretemps involving both Jill and her highly lauded successor Dean Baquet, the Times sent an advance copy of a Maureen Dowd column mostly making fun of the Obama Administration but also making reference to the CIA to the CIA for review. Baquet “explained” the matter as follows:
The optics aren’t what they look like. I’ve talked to Mark, I know the circumstance, and given what I know, it’s much ado about nothing.
Jill, for her part, provided further optical obfuscation: “I can’t provide further detail on why the entire column was sent. I can assure you that Mark was not doing the C.I.A. a favor. He is an experienced, terrific reporter. Your suggestion [that there is something wrong with letting the CIA edit the New York Times] is flat wrong.”
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss? I wouldn’t be surprised.
