She was in a fighting mood, lacing up her gloves.
“Mom’s badass new hobby,” her daughter, Dr. Cornelia Griggs, captioned an Instagram photo of a tank-topped Abramson, in boxing gloves hitting a heavy black bag.
The photo reveals the 60-year-old Abramson’s subway-token tattoo on her right shoulder, but not the now-awkward inked letter “T,” in New York Times masthead font, on her back.
Shock waves from Wednesday’s sudden ousting of Abramson, the Times’ first female executive editor, after less than three years on the job continued to reverberate through the media world on Thursday.
Publisher Sulzberger distributed a memo to staff discounting as “misinformation” reports that the firing was prompted by a dispute over pay and benefits.
Abramson had recently complained that her pay and pension as executive editor and, previously, as managing editor were less than that of her predecessor in both jobs, Bill Keller, The New Yorker had theorized.
“Compensation played no part whatsoever in my decision that Jill could not remain as executive editor,” Sulzberger wrote. “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.”
Abramson’s pay “is comparable to that of earlier executive editors,” Sulzberger also wrote.
But The New Yorker revealed Thursday night that Abramson was given a starting salary of $475,000 in 2011, while Keller was getting $559,000 when he stepped down.
Abramson has been replaced by Dean Baquet, 57, who was managing editor.
The Times itself reported that Sulzberger told a staff meeting on Wednesday that the change was due to “an issue with management in the newsroom.”
Workers “briefed on the situation described serious tension in her [Abramson’s] relationship with Mr. Sulzberger, who was concerned about complaints from employees that she was polarizing and mercurial,” the Times reported.
It also said she had “clashes with Mr. Baquet.”
http://instagram.com/p/oBhfS8jcGQ/embed/
Reporting by Laura Italiano