On Wednesday 14 May 2014, Jill Abramson was ‘dismissed’ from her position as executive editor of The New York Times. In her place Dean Ba- quet was appointed as the new execu- tive editor.
According to news reports, Arthur Sulzberger Jr told the staff that he made the change because of ‘an issue with management in the newsroom.’ The re- al reason that is apparent from a blog by Ken Auletta of The New Yorker was her re- action to the discovery that her prede- cessor Bill Keller was higher paid. The blog also reveals that Abramson was paid less than her male predecessor when she worked for Times in Washington.
However, Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy told Dylan Byers of Politico that “Jill’s total compensation as executive editor was not less than Bill Keller’s, so [Auletta’s account] is just incorrect.” While Murphy told Business Insider that Abramson’s com-
pensation ‘was not meaningfully less’ than Keller’s and that the two salaries were ‘directly comparable’ she de- clined to provide figures.
According to Auletta’s blog Abram- son also hired a lawyer to discuss the compensation issue with the Times man- agement. The blog also discusses the irony of her firing just when the paper was going into a digital first policy and that Abramson had discussed hiring Ja- nine Gibson who is employed by The Guardian in New York. Apparently Gib- son was to lead the digital first makeover and to be given a position alongside Dean Baquet as a co-manag- ing editor. When the Times manage- ment spoke with Gibson (who eventu- ally declined to join) she made it very clear that she was enthused by Abram- son and the Times management sent an eMail to Abramson about the desir- ability of extending her contract for an- other three years.
All this happened just two weeks be- fore Baquet raised his objections to these changes without being consulted. For the record, Jill Abramson was the first woman executive editor at the Times and now Dean Baquet is the first African- American to occupy that position.
