Abramson's abrupt dismissal and disappearance from the newsroom last Wednesday raised questions about her management style, her compensation and whether she was treated differently than a man would have been. Managing Editor Dean Baquet was tapped to succeed her, becoming the first African American to run the Times newsroom.
The suddenness of her departure surprised many in the industry, partly because Abramson, 60, had worked at the company for 17 years — the last three as its top editor. She was so dedicated to the Times that she has a tattoo of its letter "T," signifying her ties to the paper. Though respected as a hard-charging veteran journalist, she was known to have a prickly personality that rubbed some the wrong way.
"We had an issue with management in the newsroom. And that's what's at the heart of this issue," Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. told staffers, according to a Times report. In subsequent statements, he cited "arbitrary decision-making, a failure to consult and bring colleagues with her, inadequate communication and the public mistreatment of colleagues." He also denied that Abramson, who reportedly had complained about her salary, was being paid less than her male predecessor.
"I've loved my run at the Times," Abramson said in a statement about her ouster, noting her push into digital journalism and new forms of story-telling. She has not spoken publicly about what happened.
So her address to 1,900 graduates of Wake Forest University, on a sunny morning in Winston-Salem, N.C., drew a swam of media in the front row of the 12,000 seats lined up on Hearn Plaza. She had agreed to give the speech prior to her firing.
"I cannot think of a better message for the Class of 2014 than that of resilience," th! e school's president, Nathan Hatch, said in a statement late last week. "I am confident she will have an inspiring and timely message for our graduates."
Times media columnist David Carr, in a column Monday, says Times staffers were stunned by last week's announcement. "We all just looked at one another. How did our workplace suddenly become a particularly bloody episode of Game of Thrones? It is one thing to gossip or complain about your boss, but quite another to watch her head get chopped off in the cold light of day. The lack of decorum was stunning."
Still, Carr says his interviews with senior people in the newsroom, some of them women, back up Sulzberger's conclusion that "she had lost the support of her masthead colleagues and could not win it back."
He recalls how in 2010 — before Abramson became executive editor — she sent him a "handwritten attaboy note about a big story. It still hangs in my cubicle: 'You wrote a story about the trashing of a once great American institution and people never tire of that.'"
Carr added: "Jill loved juicy stories, the ones full of subtext, intrigue and very high stakes. Now she is right in the middle of one."
Skeels and Lamm reported from Winston-Salem, N.C., and Koch from McLean, Va.
USA TODAY Columnist Michael Wolff speaks about Jill Abramson's ouster at "The New York Times." VPC
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