Jill Abramson wasn’t fired because she’s a woman. But she might have been fired — at least in part — because she was systematically getting rid of male editors and replacing them with women.
When Abramson became executive editor of the New York Times in August 2011, just one of the eight newsroom masthead editor jobs was held by a woman. I reported in January that four of the then-nine jobs were held by women.
By the time Abramson was fired last week, that number had increased to five, and Abramson had been trying to hire another woman, Janine Gibson, as co-managing editor for digital.
“The New York Times has a point of view: ‘Women are victims, we need to remedy that, we need to promote them preferentially,’ ” Mel Feit of the National Center for Men told me.
But Abramson went too far in some eyes. The victims were the talented, hardworking male editors who were forced out, or passed over, in Abramson’s campaign of affirmative action.
How fitting that she got a condolence call from Anita Hill, the feminist icon who tried to keep Clarence Thomas off the US Supreme Court. Thomas is an ardent foe of affirmative action.