Jill Abramson, ousted as The New York Times’ top editor in May, is starting to break her silence — and has instantly sparked a very public battle over who got the first interview with the journalist.
On Tuesday, the 60-year-old New York native was on WABC-AM 770’s drive-time radio show, “The Ride Home,” with Pat Kiernan and Rita Cosby .
That came as a surprise to Katie Couric, who had been hyping what she believed was going to be a Yahoo! News exclusive interview with Abramson on the Web portal that was slated to air on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Fox News Channel began promoting on Tuesday an interview Abramson will give to Greta Van Susteren on Wednesday at 7 p.m. during her FNC show.
Once FNC began pumping its Abramson chat, Couric’s team took down its promo of an exclusive chat.
At the same time, Cosmopolitan Editor-in-Chief Joanna Coles may have beaten them all — the magazine interviewed Abramson six weeks ago.
That talk was slated to hit newsstands in the September issue — but Coles rushed publication to Tuesday, when Cosmo placed it on its website.
Abramson had given no inteviews since Times Chairman and Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. canned her on May 14.
In the Cosmo interview, Abramson said, “I am not ashamed of getting fired.” She had made history 2¹/₂ years ago as the first female executive editor in Times history.
The former Timeswoman concedes she was brought to tears by a lengthy article by Dylan Byers on Politico.com in 2013 that detailed growing disenchantment and anger with her among some forces inside the newsroom who had labeled Abramson stubborn and condescending.
Abramson labeled it a “hatchet job.”
Aside from the front page of The Post, she said she did not read a lot of what was written about her.
“[A] lot of my friends [like Maureen Dowd, Michiko Kakutani, Jane Mayer, Ellen Pollock] were like my medieval food tasters. They read it, and if I really needed to know something, they would tell me,” she said.
Abramson is teaching at Harvard in the fall and said she is still doing some writing, but tells Cosmo, “I know I really don’t want to run something again right now.”
On the mend
Dean Baquet, the man who in mid-May was picked to succeed Jill Abramson as executive editor of The New York Times following her abrupt ouster, quietly returned to the newsroom in recent weeks after having a malignant tumor removed from one of his kidneys on June 14 — two days after it was discovered as part of a routine physical exam.
The road back has not been easy, insiders said, and Baquet took more time off than he initially planned.
When The New York Times revealed on June 16 that Baquet had undergone the operation, it said he expected to be back in the newsroom after taking a week off.
When he returned several weeks ago, he was only putting in half-days and has recently been trying to increase the time, sources said.
“But he is still not back to 12-hour days,” said one source.
Even before his illness was disclosed, he said he was going to take his time in appointing a No. 2 editor, and two months after his appointment, the job remains open.
The lack of a clear No. 2 created some problems, since no one person was clearly in charge when he was out.
A number of editors stepped up to run the news meetings, including assistant managing editors Susan Chira and Ian Fisher.
A spokeswoman said the paper was standing by the original statement, that the “prognosis is good.”
Baquet did not return a call seeking comment.