Jill Abramson fired from New York Times? Could it be true that the first female employee to hold a high editing position at the Times has just been sacked? Apparently, it is.
Jill Abramson, former executive editor of the New York Times will be teaching at Harvard University starting this fall.
Abramson will be teaching under the English department and will be sharing her knowledge on narrative non-fiction to the undergraduates of the university. Abramson graduated from this very same university in 1976.
Abramson said in her statement, "Narrative non-fiction journalism is more important than ever. Its traditions and how it is changing in the digital transition are fascinating areas of study."
The fact that such a great talent was fired from one of the country's most prominent editorials stirred controversy. David Carr, a known media critic of the Times, wrote in his column that the other members of the staff were shocked when they heard of this human resource decision. Abramson had worked for the Times for almost twenty years.
Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. replaced Abramson with managing director Dean Baquet. This happened so suddenly that the media was outraged. A lot of speculations surfaced about the reasons why Sulzberger decided to replace Abramson with Baquet. Speculations were further ignited by claims that Abramson was a victim of insidious gender discrimination, particularly as she sought legal counsel for addressing what she noticed as a discrepancy between her compensation and that of her male predecessors.
Still, despite it all, Abramson told the graduating college students, only days after she packed up and left, that the job she had with Times "was the honor of my life." This was during her commencement speech at the Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem. She told the graduates, "What's next for me? I don't know. So I'm in exactly the same boat as you are. I'm a little scared but also excited." This drew a lot of laughter from the crowd and she was more than happy to receive a standing ovation.
