Shakeup at New York Times highlights big issues for media

The big news in journalism nerdworld right now—pretty much the only news—is the unceremonious firing of Jill Abramson as the executive editor of the New York Times. Publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. announced the firing to the newsroom Wednesday. Managing editor Dean Baquet was announced as Abramson’s replacement.

Writing in the New Yorker, Ken Auletta identified three issues that were behind the abrupt change, all of which are likely to be issues in the career of anyone in the content business this century. They were:

• Abramson confronting Times brass about her pay and pension benefits being considerably less than those of her predecessor, Bill Keller;
• Abramson clashing with CEO Mark Thompson “over native advertising and the perceived intrusion of the business side into the newsroom”;
• Office politics: There were disagreements over the process of hiring a second managing editor. The Times’ own report has more about this drama, which involved an editor named Janine Gibson of the Guardian, who says, “I said no.”

The unequal pay issue ties in to the larger one of gender equality in newsrooms. As many people have pointed out—even long before she was fired—Abramson’s brusque management style was often criticized in terms rarely if ever used to describe male bosses who act in similar ways. Abramson also didn’t make a farewell statement to the newsroom, a courtesy extended to Howell Raines in 2003, when he was fired in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal.

To understand gender history @ NYT, must start w/ "Girls in the Balcony" (http://t.co/YTpvYIv2J4) by Nan Robertson (http://t.co/yq4wnK8fGI)

— Sewell Chan (@sewellchan) May 15, 2014

The “church-state” issue of the “intrusion of the business side into the newsroom” is a central issue in the media business today. It’s no accident that they’re fighting about it at the most august publication in American journalism.

Office politics: If you escape them, write a how-to book.

The American Press Institute has a good roundup of Wednesday’s events. I would add a few pieces that either didn’t make the cut or were published later:

What Might Leadership Change Mean for Times Readers? by Margaret Sullivan, the Times’ public editor.

I Sort of Hope We Find Out That Jill Abramson Was Robbing the Cash Register: Trying to explain a singularly humiliating firing by Rebecca Traister, New Republic