Name: New York Times employees can bully their bosses into submission. Just don't criticize a celebrity
Brand: washingtonexaminer.com
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New York Times employees can bully their bosses into submission. Just don't criticize a celebrity

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A newspaper, beyond its moral purpose to tell the truth, is functionally a business. To turn a profit, it must balance journalistic integrity with revenue from subscribers and advertisers. Thus, it came as absolutely no surprise when the New York Times fired Alison Roman, the up-and-coming chef who irked professional celebrity Chrissy Teigen with a rude remark in an interview that was .After all, more than a quarter-million people to the highly lucrative cooking section, and if a powerful celebrity sics 12 million of her followers onto a little-known peer, especially after she's been deemed racist, it should come as no surprise that the New York Times would make that calculation that as a matter of dollars and cents, the risk of canceled subscriptions would supersede the moral cost of bowing to the mob.Which is why it's absolutely astonishing that the New York Times responded to 24 hours of subordinates claiming its editorial directors were putting people in physical danger and smearing another colleague's character as racist would be responded to not with mass firings but total and pathetic acquiescence.As you may recall from a long day ago, after the opinion page published a fairly straightforward op-ed from Sen. Tom Cotton, arguing to utilize the military in quelling protests — a position shared by the majority of Americans and 46% of people who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, mind you — several staff members instigated a civil war, all : "Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger." After Bari Weiss, the brilliant lightning rod of the opinion page, posted a relatively unemotional distillation of the current fracas, even more minions smeared her as dishonest.This is such a willful misrepresentation of things and ignores so many of our older colleagues, many who have been with the NYT for decades, who have spoken out. — Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz)this lazily characterizes both the experience i've had having tough, honest, deeply important conversations w/ dozens of colleagues the last 18 hrs as well as the important, good faith conversation we were having as opinion staff when this was tweeted. — Charlie Warzel (@cwarzel)As a member of an opinion desk who's worked professionally in about a half-dozen newsrooms, I've found that there are three acceptable forms of recourse when you disagree with an employee, and I've done all three: address your disagreement with a colleague or your superior directly, turn lemons into lemonade by addressing your disagreement in a respectful article, or resign in protest. What is absolutely unacceptable is to smear your bosses or your colleagues, and thus your employer's brand, and expect that it didn't justify punishment, presumably in the form of a suspension or a termination.But the New York Times didn't come out in defense of Weiss and quietly reprimand the behavior of her haters. Instead, they buckled to the mob.NEW: Times spokeswoman sends mea culpa — marc tracy (@marcatracy)Publishing the opinions of the Taliban wasn't a bridge too far for the staff, and employees claiming that destroying property isn't violence on national television isn't a bridge too far for the management. But a sitting United States senator's opinion that's shared by the majority of the electorate is, and as a result, journalism will suffer in the future.The bitter babies at the New York Times wanted less speech, and they got it. They'll now publish fewer op-eds overall. There is a wholly illiberal war on the free press, and its primary aggressors aren't in the White House or corrupt police stations. It's being waged from within the inside.

A newspaper, beyond its moral purpose to tell the truth, is functionally a business. To turn a profit, it must balance journalistic integrity with revenue from subscribers and advertisers. Thus, it came as absolutely no surprise when the New York Times fired Alison Roman, the up-and-coming chef who irked professional celebrity Chrissy Teigen with a rude remark in an interview that was .After all, more than a quarter-million people to the highly lucrative cooking section, and if a powerful celebrity sics 12 million of her followers onto a little-known peer, especially after she's been deemed...

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The Washington Examiner is an American conservative news website and weekly magazine based in Washington, D.C. It is owned by MediaDC, a subsidiary of Clarity Media Group, which is owned by Philip Anschutz. From 2005 to mid-2013, the Examiner published a daily tabloid-sized newspaper, distributed throughout the Washington, D.C., metro area. The newspaper focused on local news and political commentary. The local newspaper ceased publication on June 14, 2013, whereupon its content began to focus almost exclusively on national politics, switching its print edition from a daily newspaper to a weekly magazine format.

New York Times employees can bully their bosses into submission. Just don't criticize a celebrity

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