Study Hall Digest 6/8/2020

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

James Bennet Is Out. What’s Next for the New York Times?

New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet resigned on Sunday after publishing an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton calling for the military to suppress protests against police brutality, a decision that has been met with some surprise and relief by Times staff. Staffers also hope that Bennet’s resignation will represent the first of many long-overdue changes to an institution that has long suffered from a lack of diversity. “Wow. Well James’s resignation makes me somewhat… Hopeful?” wrote one employee an internal Slack channel, screenshots of which were viewed by Study Hall. “I really thought leadership would protect their own yet again. I didn’t want James’s firing/resignation to be a stand-in for change – we have a lot of work to do – but this does represent a first step.”

The newsroom uprising after the publication of Cotton’s op-ed is the product of more than a single (bad, factually inaccurate, fascist) opinion piece. “As if it weren’t hard enough to be a black employee of the New York Times,” tweeted New York Times Magazine editor Jazmine Hughes after the publication of the op-ed. Later that day, dozens of newsroom employees tweeted the text “Running this puts Black @nytimes staff in danger,” accompanied by a screenshot of the op-ed’s headline. (Freelancers also pulled stories, citing objections to the piece in emails to editors.)

The Times’ most recent Diversity and Inclusion Report shows a newsroom slowly making progress in staff and leadership diversity, but still overwhelmingly white — the staff was 65% white in 2019, slightly less than 73% in 2015. The percentage of Black staff in 2019 is the same as in 2015, having dipped down into lower percentages for a few years before rising again to a measly 9%. Black leadership at the Times has risen from 4% of leadership positions to 6%.

A Times employee who spoke to Study Hall on the condition of anonymity described the Cotton piece — and the Opinion section’s many bad op-eds in general — as the most visible byproduct of “poor decision-making that comes out of a lack of diversity and a lack of progressive thinking from leadership.”

Staffers were also frustrated that the Opinion section’s willingness to publish calls for violent military suppression of protests exists alongside a notoriously stringent social media policy that bars non-Opinion newsroom staff from sharing political opinions online or participating in protest movements in any way. Days before the publication of Cotton’s op-ed, newsroom staff received an email reminding them they are forbidden from participating in protests or “hashtag advocacy or profile-picture campaigns” (presumably a reference to #BlackoutTuesday).

“To preserve our journalistic independence, we also advise staff members not to donate or volunteer for advocacy groups, funds, or other organizations involved in news events or controversies that we are covering,” reads the email. “In the current situation, that includes bail funds and other groups that oppose cash bail and advocate criminal justice reforms. Those are clear coverage for us.” The email goes on to say that “donations to purely charitable groups are fine under our rules.” The email also included guidelines for language to use while covering the protests.

“To me, that has been one of the jarring things,” said the anonymous Times employee. “That right before this op-ed was published, we have this email that was telling us, ‘Here’s our guidance on how to be very careful and sensitive and accurate in our language and also here’s what you can do as an individual who works in the newsroom.’ Then we publish this piece, which has the most awful language to [promote] the most awful message. Then on top of it, everyone was like, ‘Well, can we even say anything publicly about this?’”

Staffers did, ultimately, say something publicly about it, which could indicate a profound shift in the culture at the Times. The Times prizes an idealized journalistic objectivity above all else, to the point that even its freelancers must agree not to discuss their politics on social media. But as we know, journalistic objectivity in practice holds up the dominant (white, male) perspective as the default view and tends to be deferential to those in power. Many Times staffers clearly find this sensibility outdated, and maybe this means Times leadership will rethink its approach to the notion of objectivity altogether.

Bennet resigned because, according to Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, it would have been difficult for him to lead the “significant change” needed in the op-ed section. The reporting around the Cotton op-ed’s publication revealed that Bennet had not even read the piece (and that the Times had pitched it to Cotton, not the other way around). Still, he initially defended its publication once criticism erupted. One employee wrote in an internal Slack channel that, even if one were to defend the decision to publish the op-ed, “the fact that he didn’t address an employee’s objection to a sensitive story, and didn’t stand in front of the mess and take responsibility for it when it blew up, made the thought of him continuing unbearable.”

Deputy editorial page editor Katie Kingsbury will step in as interim director of the section through the November election, according to the Times. On Sunday, she sent a note to Opinion staff urging those who see “any piece of Opinion journalism — including headlines or social posts or photos or you name it — that gives you the slightest pause, please call or text me immediately.” That, at least, seems like a start. I have a feeling the Times staff will take her up on that.

Longread of the Week: With the Groundhog Day-esque return of debates on the value of “ideological diversity,” it’s a good week to revisit Jo Livingstone’s “How to Write a Nazi.” “Fascism is made out of lies. The more lies that fascists tell, [Hannah] Arendt teaches us, the more that the reader’s conception of the damning and the not-damning is blurred,” Livingstone writes. “As a result of that loss of perspective, writers who simply represent (rather than report on) extremists leave rhetorical spaces open for Nazi ideology to flood in. You cannot let a Nazi hang himself, because he is the one left holding the rhetorical rope.”

Educate Yourself With the Ben & Jerry’s Blog

Each week we highlight one post from Delia Cai’s daily media newsletter Deez Links.

As Caity Weaver pointed out on Twitter last night: apparently your Vermontian faves, Ben & Jerry’s, runs what is possibly the most legit corporate blog of all time, with their August 2019 entry on the legacy of slavery in the U.S. reappearing on their “most popular” bar as of late.

I highly encourage taking a spin through its archives and checking out their piece on undocumented farm workers during COVID-19, their q&a with ACLU strategist Lewis Conway, Jr., and excellent infographic on cannabis justice. Like sure, it’s a little unconventional to situate a call to dismantle white supremacy next to an update on the launch of the Boots On The Moooo’n flavor, (and let’s not ever forget the brands are first and foremost here to make some $$), but you know what, if B & J can contain such multitudes, so should we, at the very least.

Everything Else (Mostly Racism in the Media Industry)

— Journalists at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette say the paper is barring Black reporters from covering the ongoing protests because they are seen as biased. Fortunately, the newsroom’s union and the non-Black colleagues have gone to bat for them. Just another example of how the notion of journalistic objectivity can be used to uphold white supremacy!!!

— Another resignation over controversial protest-adjacent coverage: the top editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer stepped down after running a piece with the headline “Buildings Matter, Too,” about the destruction of some of the city’s buildings. Dozens of newsroom employees staged a walk-out in response to the headline.

— LA Times executive editor Norman Pearlstine sent an email to staff acknowledging the paper’s history of fueling “racism and cruelty” in the city it covers, and more recently for “focusing on a white subscriber base even as the city becomes majority non-white.” He announced a number of reforms, including doing a better job of hiring journalists of color and being more transparent about diversity statistics within the newsroom.

— Former Refinery29 staffers have called out the publication for fostering a toxic work culture for people of color, including pay disparities, a devaluing of work from women of color, and constant racist comments. One striking anecdote: former fashion news editor Channing Hargrove told WWD that the editor in chief asked her to write an APOLOGY TO WHITE WOMEN for writing about them appropriating gold chains.

— Former Paper magazine culture editor Michael Love Michael spoke out about mistreatment of Black and POC employees at the publication. Other former employees of the magazine shared similar stories of being held back at the magazine while white employees advanced quickly.

— Margaret Sullivan, former public editor of the New York Times and current media columnist at the Washington Post, took on the notion of journalistic objectivity in her column this past week. “Every piece of reporting — written or spoken, told in text or in images — is the product of choices,” she writes. “Every article approaches its subject from somebody’s perspective. Every digital home page, every printed front page, every 30-minute newscast, every one of the news alerts blowing up your phone, every radio talk show is the product of decision-making.”

— Some good news: Condé Nast has finally recognized the Wired Union. The union was ignored for weeks amidst layoffs at the magazine.

— California Sunday is discontinuing its print edition, citing “the most difficult economic conditions of our lifetimes, especially for a small company that depends on live events and sponsorship.”