Dream job turns sour for NYT's first woman chief

When Ms Jill Abramson, 60, was asked to be executive editor of The New York Times, she accepted, saying it would be the honour of her life.

But last Wednesday, less than three years into her tenure, she was replaced abruptly by Mr Dean Baquet, 57, managing editor and second in command at the newspaper.

Many outsiders were shocked, but for months, people in the company were aware that tension between Ms Abramson and Mr Arthur Sulzberger Jr, the publisher of the newspaper and chairman of The New York Times Co, had been bubbling below the surface.

Not the most popular figure, Ms Abramson - the first woman to helm The New York Times - had been described by colleagues as stubborn, condescending and unreasonable. She told Newsweek she had cried after reading a Politico article in April last year about losing support in her newsroom.

But the most scorching words were perhaps those printed in her own newspaper - or at least the one she used to lead - which said last Wednesday there had been complaints from employees that she was "polarising and mercurial".

Mr Sulzberger told the newsroom in Manhattan that the decision had been made due to "an issue with management in the newsroom".

The handover from Ms Abramson to Mr Baquet was markedly different from the time when Ms Abramson received the baton from predecessor Bill Keller. For starters, she was not at the announcement.

According to The New York Times, Mr Baquet thanked Ms Abramson for teaching him "the value of great ambition", but then added that Mr John Carroll, whom he worked for at The Los Angeles Times, "told me that great editors can also be humane editors".

"I have loved my run at the Times," Ms Abramson said in a prepared statement, and noted her appointment of many senior woman editors as one of her achievements.

Under her watch, the Times also won eight Pulitzer Prizes and increased its efforts to move from print to digital.

But in recent weeks, a dispute apparently arose between Ms Abramson and management over the issue of her being paid less than previous editor Mr Keller. The New Yorker magazine even wrote that she had hired a lawyer to inquire about "pay and pension disparities".

In a memo to staff last Thursday, however, Mr Sulzberger said Ms Abramson's pay was "comparable to that of earlier executive editors".

In a statement on Saturday, he said she had been paid 10 per cent more than her predecessor in her final year.

That statement was the longest and strongest response by Mr Sulzberger, citing a pattern of behaviour that included "arbitrary decision-making, a failure to consult and bring colleagues with her, inadequate communication and the public mistreatment of colleagues".

Mr Sulzberger said he ultimately concluded that "she had lost the support of her masthead colleagues and could not win it back".

As far back as a year ago, there had also been clashes between Ms Abramson and Mr Baquet, who, after an argument, reportedly stormed out of her office, slammed his hand against a wall and did not return for the rest of the day. Mr Baquet told Politico later: "I feel bad about that... the newsroom doesn't need to see one of its leaders have a tantrum."

But more recently, Ms Abramson also went over Mr Baquet's head by offering a job to a senior editor at The Guardian, Ms Janine Gibson, with the intention of installing her alongside him in a co-managing editor position, without consultation.

The media and Twitter users have latched on to her dismissal, turning it into an issue of sexism and double standards on women leaders.

While Ms Abramson may have been difficult to work with, the tough New York native is generally considered among the best in the industry and was known for her investigative journalism as a reporter.

She started as a stringer for Time magazine while studying history and literature at Harvard University, and spent a year at the magazine after graduation.

She was later hired by The Wall Street Journal and became its deputy bureau chief in Washington. In 1997, she joined The New York Times and rose to the posts of Washington bureau chief (2000-2003) and managing editor (2003-2011), before assuming the executive editorship.

The married mother-of-two had said her own mother would read Little Women, poetry and Dickens to her and her sister as they were growing up. But what the family considered essential reading was The New York Times. "The New York Times was our religion," she had said more than once.

So, it is not surprising that the woman who rose to the top at the newspaper she revered has a tattoo of the Times' gothic "T" on her back. What she will do with that now has sparked a round of tongue-in-cheek posts and comments on how it might be "corrected".

This article was published on May 19 in The Straits Times.

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