Times Co. owner Arthur Sulzberger’s efforts to contain a PR nightmare were overwhelmed Friday by a great mudslide of social media indignation over the ignominious removal of top editor Jill Abramson from The New York Times.
People from all corners came out to defend Abramson, the first female editor of the paper. Her abrupt firing Wednesday served to spark a national conversation on sexism in the workplace and gender
inequality in pay.
Both women and men hit the Times on its treatment of Abramson — awkwardly replaced by Dean Baquet, her No. 2 editor and now the first African-American editor of the newspaper.
Rachel Sklar, who works to encourage women’s workplace advancement through her e-mail newsletter, The List, told The Post: “People are calling foul on sexism. Jill was maybe not the greatest manager . . . still the way she was treated was stunningly sexist, so different from anyone else,” including the petty tyrants who were her predecessors.
Publisher Arthur Sulzberger even caught heat from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who called for a Pay Packet Fairness Act.
“The woman that ran that newspaper was fired yesterday. Why?” Reid asked. “It’s now in the press that because she complained she was doing the same work as men in two different jobs and made a lot less money than they did.”
Walt Mossberg, a former colleague of Abramson when both worked at the Wall Street Journal, said, “As a longtime ex-colleague of Jill’s, I can say she is a person of talent and principle.”
“And,” said Mossberg, now running the tech site, Recode, “even if there were real reasons to replace her (which we don’t know) the way it was handled was uncalled-for and inexcusable.”
Jodi Kantor, a Times correspondent, tweeted a link to a Slate piece on the topic quoting the line, “To young women at the New York Times, Jill Abramson was everything.”
Hollywood chronicler Nikki Finke said she is happy “the New York Times Dean Baquet inherits is damaged.”
On Twitter, Finke accused Baquet of setting the Abramson ouster in motion.