THE NEW YORK Times has stunned the media world by firing its executive editor Jill Abramson without any clear reason.
In its own report about the shake up in the newsroom, the newspaper said the 60-year-old was ‘abruptly dismissed’ yesterday.
She is to be immediately replace by managing editor Dean Baquet.
Reporters David Carr and Ravi Somaiya described a “stunned newsroom” following the announcement by published Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
Abramson took over the top job in September 2011. Sources within the newspaper have said there was a “serious tension” between her and the publisher, who believed employee complaints that she was “polarising and mercurial”.
There were also “clashes” between the editor and her second-in-command Baquet.
Despite that report in the paper, the official line taken was the change in leadership took place because of “concern about aspects of newsroom management”.
In her own statement, Abramson said under her watched the paper “successfully blazed trails on the digital frontier” and “come so far in inventing new forms of storytelling”.
“Our masthead became half female for the first time and so many great women hold important newsroom positions,” she also added.
Before taking the top job, the now 60-year-old journalist had been an investigative reporter for the rival Wall Street Journal and then the head of the Times’ Washington bureau from 1997.
She acknowledged in an interview last month that she had four tattoos including a “T” representing the Times.
According to the company’s 2013 annual statement, the firm had an annual turnover of $1.57 billion.
Additional reporting by AFP
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