Abramson out as NYT editor, Baquet replaces her

H.L. Mencken · May 16, 2014

Re: Abramson out and NYT editor, Baquet replaces her

LongTimeListener said:

The Times' response to this has been spectacular fail the likes of which, were it any other company, Maureen Dowd would use as the butt of an incredibly unfunny humor column two weeks from now.
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Dapper Dean! Jilted Jill! The Perilous Predicament of Pinch! The Ghost of Punch! Hopes and dreams Snowfalling right and left!

trounced · May 16, 2014

Re: Abramson out and NYT editor, Baquet replaces her

YankeeFan said:

H.L. Mencken said:

Cable talking heads can't resist talking about this whether people care or not because the NYT sets the agenda for what they talk about every single day. If the NYT went away tomorrow talking heads would wet their pants because they would no longer have a road map to guide them.
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Totally true.
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Actually, I think it's Drudge.

Michael_ Gee · May 16, 2014

Re: Abramson out and NYT editor, Baquet replaces her

This story is also more evidence that after family-owned businesses grow into big businesses, the rule of thumb should be that family members can clip all the coupons they desire, but should not be placed as senior executives, or indeed as anything but stockholders. It also ought to be illegal to sell non-voting common stock as does the Times and many other companies.

cranberry · May 16, 2014

Re: Abramson out and NYT editor, Baquet replaces her

Michael_ Gee said:

This story is also more evidence that after family-owned businesses grow into big businesses, the rule of thumb should be that family members can clip all the coupons they desire, but should not be placed as senior executives, or indeed as anything but stockholders.
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You obviously didn't see Gregg Sulzberger's 96-page internal task force report on the Times' digital future.

LongTimeListener · May 16, 2014

Re: Abramson out and NYT editor, Baquet replaces her

Post assigns photog to Abramson's house, catches her out for a walk. The lead: "Jill Abramson's dog may be the only thing she takes crap from."

http://jimromenesko.com/2014/05/16/new-york-post-assigns-a-photographer-to-stake-out-jill-abramsons-home-of-course/jill-2/

That's pretty awesome.

Joe Williams · May 16, 2014

Re: Abramson out and NYT editor, Baquet replaces her

I read through these five pages and now I am extremely sad because I never will get that time back.
What a colossal waste of time.
Each subsequent editor of a newspaper should be paid less than his/her predecessor, in proportion to the downward-spiraling profits, circulations, impact of the organization over which they preside.

LongTimeListener · May 16, 2014

Poor Joe. I'll email you a dollar.

Too bad the thread title was so cryptic and you had no way of knowing what it was about.

DanOregon · May 16, 2014

Joe Williams said:

I read through these five pages and now I am extremely sad because I never will get that time back.
What a colossal waste of time.
Each subsequent editor of a newspaper should be paid less than his/her predecessor, in proportion to the downward-spiraling profits, circulations, impact of the organization over which they preside.
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I kind of like this logic. They have fewer employees to oversee.

JayFarrar · May 16, 2014

DanOregon said:

Joe Williams said:

I read through these five pages and now I am extremely sad because I never will get that time back.
What a colossal waste of time.
Each subsequent editor of a newspaper should be paid less than his/her predecessor, in proportion to the downward-spiraling profits, circulations, impact of the organization over which they preside.
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I kind of like this logic. They have fewer employees to oversee.
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well, according to one article, the Times has as many newsroom employees as they did 10 years ago, about 1,100 and something like 30 national and international bureaus.

A number that has grown in the last 10 years according to that same article.

DanOregon · May 17, 2014

I still like the idea of it. Of course, CEOs have been cashing in while they have cashiered employees for decades.

Joe Williams · May 17, 2014

LongTimeListener said:

Poor Joe. I'll email you a dollar.

Too bad the thread title was so cryptic and you had no way of knowing what it was about.
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Defensive much? I knew what it was about. But it veered into wrangling over the quality of various newspapers' digital efforts and continued to perpetuate the folly of the "equal pay/equal work" bellyaching. Equal effort, equal results, equal credentials, equal tenure, equal quality, equal quantity? OK, sure, then equal pay.

Size of newsroom/organization's staff isn't reason enough to justify equal pay to a journalism predecessor. Ought to be proportional to what staffers' cuts have been, in relation to profits too. These aren't newspaper fat times, so expecting predecessors' same paychecks is delusional. Unless top brass just wants to make the worker bees bear all the burden.

Oh, and I will take the dollar.

YankeeFan · May 17, 2014

Re: Abramson out and NYT editor, Baquet replaces her

Joe Lapointe said:

I am not an expert on The New York Times, past or present. I worked there only 20 years and took a generous and voluntary buyot in 2010. Since then, I've taught a lot of journalism classes, most recently "Journalism Inquiry" at N.Y.U.

When the most recent Pulitzer Prizes were announced, I told my students I had an ominous feeling about The Times. Although it won two for photography, it won none for writing and reporting. "This does not bode well for top editors there," I told my students.

I can't help but wonder if this was one of many factors in Jill Abramson's abrupt sacking. Since the summer of 2001, The Times has had, as executive editors, Joe Lelyveld, Howell Raines, Bill Keller, Jill Abramson and, now, Dean Baquet. If a sports franchise had this much turnover at the top, sports reporters would harshly question the judgment of ownership.

During this period, The Times allowed Judith Miller to be used by Dick Cheney to start a ghastly and unnecessary war whose poisonous effects are being felt to this day. The Times allowed Jayson Blair to fabricate and plagiarize stories, a fiasco about which documentaries are still produced. The Times allowed a two-woman lynch mob in the sports department to push a false Duke lacrosse rape story that gave even Fox News the chance to attack the Times' journalistic judgment and integrity.

That said, The Times is still by far the best news operation in the United States and, perhaps, the world. Each day, it runs dozens of stories of the highest quality with insight that enlightens readers and set the news agenda for other, lesser operations . It performs traditional journalism, for the most part, with integrity and a genuine and high-minded sense of fairness and thoroughness.

But it also is caught up in the roiling, churning world of 21st. Century journalism in which facts of even proven science are dismissed as "liberal opinion" and sucker-punches by cheap-shot artists have replaced sober, reasoned commentary in print, on line and on television. The Abramson affair -- with its angles of money, gender, office politics -- has many of the "hooks" that give a story "legs." Books and even plays will be written about this episode. As a former Timesman who still admires the institution, I pray The Times emerges from this era with its power and glory intact, no matter the "platform" it presents its stories going forward.
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Did the Observer contact Joe after reading his post here, or did he tell them the same thing he told us:

Joe Lapointe, who covered sports at the Times for 20 years before taking a buyout and still cares deeply about an institution he admires, shared this comment: “When the most recent Pulitzer Prizes were announced, I told my students I had an ominous feeling about the Times. Although it won two for photography, it won none for writing and reporting. ‘This does not bode well for top editors there,’ I told my students. I can’t help but wonder if this was one of many factors in Jill Abramson’s abrupt sacking.”

Mr. Lapointe told the Observer, “Since the summer of 2001, the Times has had, as executive editors, Joe Lelyveld, Howell Raines, Bill Keller, Jill Abramson and, now, Dean Baquet. If a sports franchise had this much turnover at the top, sports reporters would harshly question the judgment of ownership. This firing and the Raines resignation in 2003 are the journalistic equivalents of Nixon’s resignation and Clinton’s impeachment. It’s more than ‘inside baseball’ for journalists. It tells us where we’re going as a culture.”

http://observer.com/2014/05/source-confirms-abramsons-high-profile-annoyed-sulzberger/#ixzz3218ZNAdB
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Abramson out as NYT editor, Baquet replaces her

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Abramson out as NYT editor, Baquet replaces her

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