Ed Werder doesn't like women helping women

This tweet from SI's Charlotte Wilder seemed innocent enough.



Then Ed Werder jumped in, and ooh boy, it escalated quickly.



Naturally, Ed was ratio'd. Twitter went bananas. By all accounts, Ed seems like a good dude, but he appears to be very much in the wrong here.

 

Somebody said something politically incorrect! Oh goodie, let’s all get on our high horses and tear that person to shreds in a social justice warrior twitter mob!!! Because, we’re all totally virtuous!

 

Which one was politically incorrect?

I see something stupid from Ed Werder. Are you saying Charlotte wilder wrote something politically incorrect?

 

It is odd how Werder, after obviously misreading the intent of the original tweet, continued to dig himself in further and further in subsequent tweets, (which you see if you followed this on Twitter).

Also, he also treats Charlotte Wilder as if she is in charge of hiring, rather than a reporter who works there and is looking to spread the word about a job opening. Bizarre episode from someone as accomplished as Werder.

 

Ed Werder might just stay a restricted free agent after that little Twitter dust-up. Foolish, foolish stuff.

Not knowing who Charlotte Wilder really was, I found that her promotion to senior writer at SI has been nothing short of meteoric.

A Q&A with Charlotte Wilder of SB Nation on her climb up the journalism ladder and writing about the “fringes of sports.”

The landscape has changed so much that I don’t know if this career bushwhacking approach would work today, but six years ago (2011) it did — based on my blog and freelance work, America’s Test Kitchen hired me as a web editor for its TV show and its two magazines, Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country. I was there for about two years, then Boston.com hired me as a general reporter in 2014. USA TODAY Sports became aware of me and hired me away from Boston.com in March 2016 (when I officially became a sportswriter, I guess), and then SB Nation hired me away from USA TODAY after seven months. I’ve been at SB Nation since November 2016.

From later in the piece:

Well, until I worked at For The Win, I wasn’t a sportswriter. They kind of took a chance on me — Nate Scott, who’s a fantastic editor, was there at the time, and he vouched for me, even though I don’t think I even knew who James Harden was at that point. My background is in culture writing and general reporting; I wasn’t really a huge sports fan before I entered this world. I liked sports, and I understood sports, and I played sports, but I wasn’t immersed in the news cycle. I didn’t really pay attention or watch that many games, to be honest. It was kind of a leap of faith to make the jump into this field. Learning the characters, the narratives, the storylines of this insane industry was like drinking from a fire hose those first six months; it kind of felt like getting a master’s degree in sports. I’m up to speed now, but at the beginning I was like… who the hell is D’Angelo Russell and why is Nick Young mad at him and what does this have to do with basketball? My editors at FTW were very patient with me as I Googled every single person in the news hits I had to write. And I’m sure I still sounded like a total moron early and often in the beginning.

She must be an awfully talented, right-out-of-the-box gifted writer to pull that off. I'll have to start reading her work more.

 

Maybe Ms. Wilder's rise has to do with how fast SI is shedding older, more expensive employees.

As for Mr. Worder - who is two years younger than I - he should be doing everything he can to generate opportunity for women and writers of color who are still under-represented in this business. This is in addition to whatever boost he can give his young, white male students.

It's not just that there are fewer women and minorities in these jobs, it's that many fewer women and minorities even apply for these jobs. Hence Ms. Wilder's encouragement to do so.

I'm not sure what Ed thinks he's defending here.

 

I don't read her often/follow her on Twitter, but she's good at both (here's a piece she did on the Kentucky Derby that was praised). IMO, the SI hire says a lot about her/how the outlet wants to shift.

 

Yeah I dunno. Maybe. I thought SI laid off some young writers, too, in the last round, but maybe not.

Werder’s biggest mistake was picking on someone so innocuous and kicking up a liberal hornet’s nest on Twitter. You’ll never win there.

Now, if I’m SI, and I gotta follow hiring laws, yeah, not sure I want my new senior writer calling for women applicants on Twitter. Because if you do hire a woman for it, it looks like a fix (and opens you up to litigation, *even if it would be bullshit litigation*) and, if you don’t, looks like you passed over women.

Her subsequent tweet about trying to make the industry more than 10 percent female - which a lawyer could read as clear intent - isn’t all that helpful either.

 

At least she paid homage to HST in the Derby piece.