Prob'ly the NYT's Pinch Sulzberger thinks it's none of our goddam beeswax why he shitcanned Exec Ed Jill Abramson (with UPDATE)

NYT caption: "Dean Baquet addressing the Times staff in the newsroom Wednesday afternoon after he was named as the new executive editor."

by Ken

Are you wondering why Jill Abramson was summarily fired after three years as the top editor of the New York Times? The New Yorker's Ken Auletta has gathered together everything he could find out ("Why Jill Abramson Was Fired"), and while it's all extremely interesting, it sure doesn't seem to me to add up to a convulsive move like this very public, very unapologetic, and yet totally unexplained shitcanning. I'm relieved to find that it doesn't seem so to washingtonpost.com media maven Erik Wemple either ("New York Times publisher Sulzberger fights back, weakly")

One point we have to take for granted is the NYT publisher "Pinch" Sulzberger (aka the Juniorest Arthur Sulzberger) had to have been prepared for a firestorm. A change of bottoms in the paper's executive-editor chair is always a huge deal, even when it comes about through age-mandated retirement of the incumbent. When it comes to a firing like this, after a mere three years on the job, well, the guy would have to be a moron not to be prepared to have the entire media universe converge on him expecting, you know, some explanation.


POSSIBILITY: PINCH REALLY IS A MORON?

Remember, he became publisher of the paper at 41 in 1992, and in the 22 years since, he has, well, grown 22 years older. Maybe he's the George W. Bush of the Sulzberger dynasty?

As to the unexpectedness and in-plain-sight, execution-style brutality of the firing, just listen to Ken Auletta:

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.

Fellow-journalists and others scrambled to find out what had happened. Sulzberger had fired Abramson, and he did not try to hide that. In a speech to the newsroom on Wednesday afternoon, he said, “I chose to appoint a new leader of our newsroom because I believe that new leadership will improve some aspects …” Abramson chose not to attend the announcement, and not to pretend that she had volunteered to step down.

POSSIBILITY: WAS THERE A MONEY GAP?

Auletta reported yesterday:

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. Sulzberger is known to believe that the Times, as a financially beleaguered newspaper, needed to retreat on some of its generous pay and pension benefits; Abramson, who spent much of her career at the Wall Street Journal, had been at the Times for far fewer years than Keller, which accounted for some of the pension disparity. Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the Times, said that Jill Abramson’s total compensation as executive editor “was directly comparable to Bill Keller’s”—though it was not actually the same. I was also told by another friend of Abramson’s that the pay gap with Keller was only closed after she complained. But, to women at an institution that was once sued by its female employees for discriminatory practices, the question brings up ugly memories. Whether Abramson was right or wrong, both sides were left unhappy. A third associate told me, “She found out that a former deputy managing editor”—a man—“made more money than she did” while she was managing editor. “She had a lawyer make polite inquiries about the pay and pension disparities, which set them off.”

Today Pinch pushed back harder on the pay-gap issue, in a staff memo that was reproduced in full by Capital New York:

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to you because I am concerned about the misinformation that has been widely circulating in the media since I announced Jill Abramson’s departure yesterday. I particularly want to set the record straight about Jill’s pay as Executive Editor of The Times.

Pinch -- no moron he, right?

It is simply not true that Jill’s compensation was significantly less than her predecessors. Her pay is comparable to that of earlier executive editors. In fact, in 2013, her last full year in the role, her total compensation package was more than 10% higher than that of her predecessor, Bill Keller, in his last full year as Executive Editor, which was 2010. It was also higher than his total compensation in any previous year.

Comparisons between the pensions of different executive editors are difficult for several reasons. Pensions are based upon years of service with the Company. Jill’s years of service were significantly fewer than those of many of her predecessors. Secondly, as you may know, pension plans for all managers at The New York Times were frozen in 2009. But this and all other pension changes at the Company have been applied without any gender bias and Jill was not singled out or differentially disadvantaged in any way.

Compensation played no part whatsoever in my decision that Jill could not remain as executive editor. Nor did any discussion about compensation. The reason – the only reason – for that decision was concerns I had about some aspects of Jill’s management of our newsroom, which I had previously made clear to her, both face-to-face and in my annual assessment.

This Company is fully committed to equal treatment of all its employees, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation or any other characteristic. We are working hard to live up to that principle in every part of our organization. I am satisfied that we fully lived up to that commitment with regard to Jill.

Arthur

Since Abramson so far isn't talking, we don't have confirmation of what seems likely from Auletta's reporting: that she sure as hell thought there was a pay gender gap.

If we want a clue as to why Abramson was shitcanned, Pinch gives us this:

"The reason – the only reason – for that decision was concerns I had about some aspects of Jill’s management of our newsroom, which I had previously made clear to her, both face-to-face and in my annual assessment."

"Some aspects of Jill's management of our newsroom." Which of course he's not at liberty to discuss. Since, again, we aren't hearing from Abramson, we don't have her view of what Pinch may have "previously made clear to her, both face-to-face and in my annual assessment."

This sounds deeply fishy to me, but let's go back to what Auletta reported.


TROUBLE WITH NYT CO. CEO MARK THOMPSON?

Sulzberger’s frustration with Abramson was growing. She had already clashed with the company’s C.E.O., Mark Thompson, over native advertising and the perceived intrusion of the business side into the newsroom. Publicly, Thompson and Abramson denied that there was any tension between them, as Sulzberger today declared that there was no church-state—that is, business-editorial—conflict at the Times. A politician who made such implausible claims might merit a front-page story in the Times. The two men and Abramson clearly did not get along.

TROUBLE WITH THEN-MANAGING EDITOR
(NOW EXECUTIVE EDITOR) DEAN BAQUET?

Not much seems to have filtered out to the outside world about what Auletta now describes as "the fractious relationship" between Abramson and her No. 2, Managing Editor Dean Baquet, who now occupies her old chair, but we're getting indications that on the inside this was well-known, and not exactly subtle. It's worth noting that Baquet was one of the people who didn't get the exec ed job back when Abramson did.

A third issue surfaced, too: Abramson was pushing to hire a deputy managing editor to oversee the digital side of the Times. She believed that she had the support of Sulzberger and Thompson to recruit this deputy, and her supporters say that the plan was for the person in this position to report to Baquet. Baquet is a popular and respected figure in the newsroom, and he had appeared, for the most part, to get along with Abramson. (I was told, however, that, at a recent dinner with Sulzberger, Baquet said he found her hard to work with.) He is also someone whom Sulzberger passed over when he chose Abramson. But Baquet apparently felt that he hadn’t been consulted, and, according to two sources, expressed his concerns to Sulzberger. He had also reportedly been approached by Bloomberg about a job there. (Baquet has not yet responded to a request for comment; neither has Abramson.)

In a reflection of the fractious relationship that Baquet and others had with Abramson, the Times reported that Baquet, speaking to the newsroom after his appointment, “praised Ms. Abramson for teaching him ‘the value of great ambition’ and then added that John Carroll, whom he worked for at The Los Angeles Times, ‘told me that great editors can also be humane editors.’ ”

THEN THERE'S ABRAMSON'S "BRUSQUENESS"

We always hear, of course, about how Jill A can be "brusque." Back to Auletta:

The reason Sulzberger originally hesitated to appoint Abramson as executive editor was a worry about her sometimes brusque manner. As I wrote in my Profile of Abramson, others in the newsroom, including some women, had the same concern. But, although there are always complaints about the Times’ supposed “liberal” bias, or its preoccupation with certain stories, Abramson got high marks for the investigative stories that she championed. At a time when Bloomberg News pulled the plug on an investigation of corruption and the princelings in China, Abramson pushed the Times to do more, even after her reporters came under pressure in China. Even though she thought she was politely asking about the pay discrepancy and about the role of the business side, and that she had a green light from management to hire a deputy to Baquet, the decision to terminate her was made. Sulzberger met with her last Friday, and reportedly told her that it was time to make “a change.”

Now it doesn't seem impossible to me that "brusqueness" might be held against a male top editor. It just seems likelier that it might be a near-to-hanging offense against a female top editor.


NOW IF YOU'RE GOING TO TELL ME . . .

. . . that you see grounds here for a firing, well, you're seeing something I don't. And I'm pretty astonished that Pinch didn't seem to think he had any need to be ready with a public explanation -- or, for that matter, even an explanation for his own staff -- beyond this mysterious business of "some aspects of Jill's management of our newsroom."

All I get here is that Pinch didn't like Jill, and Mark Thompson and Dean Baquet didn't like Jill, and Baquet -- who has supposedly been approached by Bloomberg -- has been telling Pinch that Jill is difficult to work with. Is there something there? Of the "either she goes or I go" variety?


AS I MENTIONED, ERIK WEMPLE IS STUMPED TOO

"As any crisis communications consultant will note," Erik begins his piece today, "a company is in a crisis when it’s forced to publicly compare the compensation levels of key departed executives." Then he sketches the background, takes note of Pinch's Memo today, and has no more luck than I do extracting from it any sense of what's really going on in Pinch's head.

Here we go again with the management-aspects line. In his address to staffers yesterday, Sulzberger said, “I choose to appoint a new leader for our newsroom because I believe that new leadership will improve some aspects of the management of the newsroom.” So that’s the default explanation, language that the Times is using as a catch-all response to the question: Why?

It’s not good enough, either. Though Abramson by many accounts irritated people and wasn’t always the most cuddly manager, listen to what Sulzberger said yesterday about how the Times performed under her watch:

It is not about the quality of our journalism, which in my mind has never been better.

Jill did an outstanding job in preserving and extending the level of excellence of our news report during her time as executive editor and, before that, as managing editor and Washington bureau chief. She’s an accomplished journalist who contributed mightily to our reputation as the world’s most important news provider.

A chasm hangs between that evaluation of Abramson’s central mission and the treatment accorded to her yesterday — a ruthless and shocking discarding, that is. Though Sulzberger has stated that he won’t go into detail about the specifics of his decision, despite the memo on pay, a good question might be this: How did Abramson’s deficiencies in “some aspects” of newsroom management compromise the news product?

And Erik concludes with this tweet:



To be continued, I imagine.


UPDATE: MORE ON THE STORY

Ken Auletta has already brought forth a follow-up, "Jill Abramson and the Times: What Went Wrong?," which notably amplifies and focuses all of the above themes without, as far as I can see, explaining anything. (One interesting tidbit: Apparently Jill A was so persuaded that she was on the wrong side of a gender pay gap -- clearly she wasn't persuaded by the arguments put forth by the NYT's damage-control flack and by Pinch himself) that she hired a lawyer to pursue the matter. On the side of the NYT high command, this seems to have been part of a "pattern" of behavior she established, presumably of non-team-playerness?)

Also, The New Yorker's excellent reporter Ben McGrath has rounded up some inside tales for a post, "Times Talk." Very interesting stuff, but still, it seems to me, no actual explanation.

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