Though we can’t know the whole story yet, Ken Auletta adds to his assessment of Jill Abramson’s abrupt firing earlier this week.
Not everything is known yet (or maybe ever will be known), but — quite apart from Auletta’s finding — we already know that Abramson was treated, um, differently from men in the same post. Just how differently we don’t yet know. The Times hasn’t released all the info about her pay.
(Sigh.)
What is a fact is that Abramson believed she was being treated unequally. After learning, recently, that her salary was not equal to her male counterparts’, she visited with Sulzberger to complain. And she hired a lawyer because she believed she was not treated fairly.
There is one more question: Why did the Times, which so heralded the hiring of its first female executive editor, terminate Abramson in such a brutal fashion? What else happened between Thompson’s April 28th plea for her to stay longer and her termination by Sulzberger, eleven days later, on Friday, May 9th?
No one is served well by this story—not Sulzberger, Abramson, or Baquet, who cannot have wanted his elevation to come with controversy. Nor is it good for the institution of the Times. …NewYorker
Why was she treated so brutally? As many a college rapist will assure you, girls really like brutes.
Cross-posted from Prairie Weather
graphic via shutterstock.com