New York city, in march 2012. I am on a visit to the magnificent Renzo Piano-designed skyscraper on eighth avenue, which accommodates the New York Times, for an interview with Jill Abramson, who six months previously took over as the first female editor-in-chief of the magazine. It has taken many calls and contacts to get to the interview, but now, she receives, in a chefsrum cluttered with books and two awful ugly green plush sofas.
She is now at the top of the media power, and have toiled long to get there. Educated at Harvard, basically a classic Manhattan-intellectual, who early on chose to journalism and spent years in the field to monitor the u.s. election. There was never any doubt that it was on the New York Times she would end up: she described to me how the magazine and its writers were ”the closest we had to a religion in the home”.
the colourful Bill Keller as editor-in-chief was natural: she had had a number of key roles at the magazine and led, in practice, much of the daily work. She was also too much of it as is the New York Times brand: the investigative journalism and the stories behind the news. What possibly stood out was her weak commitment to the digital development, in a location where the New York Times just started bet on to renew their business model. But respect for the Abramsons know-how and the experience was still so great that she was seen as a natural leader. A tough and demanding such, sometimes on the verge of it harsh in his style, but it wont be required, on the dragons as ”The gray lady”, the New York Times called.
A year later, I see Abramson again, on an exclusive mediechefskonferens during a weekend at a castle in the british Cotswolds. Then she is remarkably taciturn and reserved, and sounds the closest to dejected when she talks about the magazine’s challenges. It is not known then is that the internal battles now raging with full force, not least between her and redaktionschefen Dean Baquet. At one point leading the quarrel between them to Baquet beats his fist straight through a wall, in a fit of anger. In the spring of 2014, the conflict has gone so far as to Abramson, petas and Baquet will take over as editor-in-chief. In ”the Merchants of truth” she speaks about how the publisher Arthur Contending gives her a prewritten press release about the decision, couched in the usual omskrivningsfaser. Abramson accepts, however, not luddigheterna: ”Say I got fired, I’m going to do”.
Abramson drew back and held for several years a relatively low profile. But miljondollarkontraktet with this book would be her revenge. For several years she has been working with the project, which, according to her yourself inspired by how the experienced New York Times reporter and Vietnam, and korren David Halberstam depicted in the journalism and the industry’s development in the classic murvelboken ”The powers that be” in 1979.
From the exalted to the humiliated. Again. It is possible to understand what goes on in the today’s turned up debate.
Abramson chooses to portray the situation from the perspective of four mediejättar: the NYT, the Washington Post, BuzzFeed, and Vice. She celebrates the good journalism where it exists, but paints mostly a bleak picture of the situation, with editorial cuts, skills shortages, a too strong alignment to the commercial interests, weakened, editorial integrity, and a too strong focus on advocacy and kampanjliknande journalism which led to increased polarization and declining confidence.
the Image is, of course, to share the true: right now there is a big nedskärningsvåg through large parts of the american media industry, both at the local level, and of the purely digital activities, such as BuzzFeed. However, it becomes more difficult to see her domedagsskildring that is generally correct, considering the success of both her old journal and the Washington Post, and even several fully digital operations, like Vox, Politico, and the Axios – have had in recent years, both journalistic and economically.
When Jill Abramson took over as the New York Times editor-in-chief, she was the newspaper’s first woman in the post.
this not a story about the journalism crisis, as she perceives it. Mostly it is her showdown with the magazine and the industry she feels betrayed. And it is also where it becomes most readable.
Abramson tells us ruthlessly, behind the scenes, in a way you rarely get to read from a person with total transparency. She mentions the name, conjures up drastic scenes, saws Contending that a ”bad ” regent” and pointing to the huge structural problems with the mansvälde and misogyni. It is not a pretty picture, and it lit a lot of the revanschbegär, but it should still get up many eyes to how it happened even on the finest of the companies.
When she writes about the media she most have andrahandskännedom if, like BuzzFeed and Vice, it becomes betydigt thinner – and where she has also brakat through the ice, on several occasions. The last few weeks it has been revealed that she in at least six sections in the book more or less copied information from other media (like the Columbia journalism review and the New Yorker), but that number clearly specify the source.
Abramson has been called ”plagiatör”, which I guess is to take in. However, she has admitted that she made mistakes, which in itself is serious for a book which is about to criticize the journalistic slippery slope and lack of accuracy.
also the news that Abramson cancel his appearance on the big digitalkonferensen SXSW in a couple of weeks, where she and BuzzFeeds ceo Jonah Peretti would have debated her book on one of the biggest scenes.
From the elevated to humiliated. Again. It is possible to understand what goes on in the today’s turned up debate. Abramson has also contributed to it, with a lot of mocking bantering in his own book. Still, this is a story you should read, if you are the least bit interested in the media industry. Both for its insights, its stories and its flaws.
