Tag Archives: Jill Abramson

Leadership, Newspapers, Uncategorized

An Early Read on Baquet as New York Times Leader

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In the swirl of the Jill Abramson firing, a couple of things being said about the new executive editor, Dean Baquet, didn’t sync with my impression of him. I looked back at this video of a forum I hosted at USC Annenberg with Baquet when he had just become managing editor of The New York Times, and saw why

What I had found most worrisome was Glenn Greenwald’s charge that Baquet has “a really disturbing history of practicing this form of journalism that is incredibly subservient to the American national security state.”  When I looked back at the video of Baquet at the USC Director’s Forum on Oct. 27, 2011, I was struck by the fact that he had opened the session with an impassioned call for national-security reporting.

He talked about a call he got, when he was executive editor of the Los Angeles Times, from George Tenet, then director of the CIA. Tenet asked him to hold a story about the CIA, which was spying on the Iranian community in the U.S. Baquet told us that he held the story for a day so as to be able to review it, then called Tenet back and said he’d be running it.

Baquet talked to the gathering of students and faculty about other such stories, as well, including the New York Times reporting on National Security Agency surveillance. He noted that he had had conversations with folks in both the Obama and the Bush administrations on national-security issues, “and the argument is always the same.”

“But so far, not a single bit of evidence — even in the case of Wikileaks, which I edited – has emerged to prove that any of these stories has threatened national security. I’d argue that, in each case, it’s the newspaper that’s being the patriot.” Continue reading An Early Read on Baquet as New York Times Leader →

Like most editors I know, Baquet has indeed presided over decisions not to print. But his remarks at the forum speak to a strength of conviction that I found reassuring. (More reassuring than Baquet’s retort to Richard Prince, calling Greenwald “idiotic” for making the charge.)

The second striking thing in the video was what Baquet had to say about Jill Abramson’s hiring as editor.

A piece about Abramson by Ken Auletta had just run in the New Yorker when the USC forum occurred. I asked Baquet about the notion in that story that, in the end, Arthur Sulzberger’s choice had come down to Jill or Dean, and if the publisher had chosen Dean, he would have lost Jill. In picking Jill, he got both of them. Baquet nodded, adding: “I actually think…Arthur made the right decision. “

“I think that Jill had a lot going for her. She had worked in that newsroom.” (Baquet had been running the New York Times Washington bureau). “She’s a terrific editor.” The Auletta piece “didn’t capture some of the things she had done,” he added, saying it should have been “more about the journalism.”

Baquet continued: “When Arthur called me, I thought, ‘terrific!’ “ (He also noted that he’d been a managing editor twice, and executive editor once. “Being managing editor is about a billion times more fun. Like being coach versus being general manager: You get to hang out with the players.”

As for some of the things Auletta reported about Jill’s leadership style, “I do think that when women in leadership – the tradition of this sort of a cantankerous editor is a much more acceptable tradition for male editors than it is for women who become editor.”

Referring to the infamously difficult Times editor Abe Rosenthal, Baquet said: “In her defense…Abe is portrayed by history as a tyrant. I don’t think that’s Jill. That’s not Jill at all.”

One other thing worth noting about the forum is that Baquet speaks at length about his great enthusiasm for journalism’s new tools. Given that his supposed relative lack of passion — and relative inexperience – on the digital side of things was another concern voiced in the wake of Abramson’s firing, the eagerness with which he talked to students on this topic is noteworthy.

Leadership, Newspapers

Abramson and Sulzberger: The Two Who Couldn’t Tango

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The reasons for Jill Abramson’s firing as editor of The New York Times are no doubt many and complex. But one thing is clear: the editor-publisher relationship failed, spectacularly.

This classic journalistic partnership, when it works, is like a good marriage. Full of successes and challenges, warmth and tension, it requires constant open communication and full-hearted dedication on the part of both parties. Also loyalty. A good editor ensures that the publisher is never blindsided.  A good publisher ensures sufficient editorial independence to do good journalism. And a newsroom relies on believing that the two have confidence in one another.  The successful combinations are legendary: Punch and Abe, Katharine and Ben. (I learned how essential this partnership is when I was fortunate enough, as editor of the Des Moines Register, to work with publisher Charlie Edwards.)

What happened in this case, according to the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., is that his editor, Abramson, had to leave because of her management style. But, really: Editors are famed for being difficult.  Every journalist has stories about newsroom leaders throwing fits – or, better, potted plants. Hot tempers, arrogance, polarization:  these have practically been job requirements for editors.  I’m not saying this is a good thing.  I’m saying that it’s striking that we’d become sensitive to the unpleasantness only when a woman makes it to the top.

Actually, though, there IS cause for newsrooms to be even unhappier today than usual.  They are being made to change (though not quickly enough), and change is difficult. So, if it has always been true that newsrooms were fertile ground for anyone seeking anonymous gripes, it is even truer now. Indeed, my word to wise publishers would be to be wary today of the universally loved editor.  He’s probably not doing what you need him to do.

Of course, the editor does have a managerial responsibility to the publisher: To ensure that the staff is doing good work.  In this, Abramson seems to have succeeded. Her “management style” became a firing offense only because the editor-publisher relationship was broken.

Continue reading Abramson and Sulzberger: The Two Who Couldn’t Tango →

Similarly with another, more serious issue cited in the aftermath of the firing: pay equity. If Abramson was in fact paid less than her predecessors and perhaps even her deputies, this is indeed a worrisome matter — and one that an editor and publisher with confidence in one another would have been determined to work out.  That she hired a lawyer to represent her in this matter shows just how deeply dysfunctional the publisher-editor relationship had become.

Then there are the reports of conflicts over business issues.  When Mark Thompson was hired as chief executive in 2012, the already existing challenges of leading journalism through the dangerous shoals of business experimentation grew even more complex. Remember that newspapers are strange enterprises in that they have as a central element a unit whose behavior may, when it is at its best, be inimical to the financial fortunes of the business. Add in the fact that far-reaching innovation is now essential to the very existence of these endangered species.  Imagine the tensions that arise naturally, then, if the main business executive and the main editorial executive are both doing their jobs. Only a publisher (and chairman of the board) in open communication with each, confident of both, could make this work.

What’s striking to me in this regard is the story of the effort to hire the Guardian’s Janine Gibson as an additional managing editor.  This seems to have caught Managing Editor Dean Baquet by (understandably unpleasant) surprise.  But both Thompson and Sulzberger had met with Gibson as well as Abramson, and apparently were involved in the effort to hire her.  Had the publisher and editor never discussed how this matter would be presented to the managing editor? This is believable only in the utter absence of communication that a failed relationship implies.

Finally, of course: the gender question. It isn’t news that the newsroom culture is proudly male. Women have long struggled to figure out how to thrive in it. So it’s no wonder that Sulzberger’s vague assertion about management style opened the door to outrage. Imagine Abe Rosenthal hiring a coach to help him with his management style! Imagine if Abramson had been the one to slam her hand against the newsroom wall, as Baquet reportedly did after a disagreement with her (with no apparent dint to his reputation for being unfailingly polite and amiable).

I am happy about one side effect of this sad affair, and that is the outpouring of powerful pieces by women documenting the challenges facing women in journalism – and showing how meaningful it was for women in the Times newsroom to have a woman at the top. See, for example, Amanda Hess, Rebecca Traister, Ann Friedman, Susan Glasser and Rachel Sklar. With any luck, these beautifully crafted and deeply felt pieces will be helpful to the next person who decides to “give a woman a chance.”

It is said that Sulzberger was torn when he named Abramson editor, thinking perhaps he should have picked Baquet instead. Of all the unknowables here, this one rings especially true. It would explain why these two key relationships — publisher-editor, and editor-managing editor – were doomed.  In the end, Abramson may have felt very much as if she were standing between two people who just wanted her gone.

(Full disclosure: I know Sulzberger, Abramson and Baquet, and admire them all.)