The New Yorker journal has fired a staffer who took to Twitter and criticized the publication for not hiring a various sufficient workforce.
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A staffer at The New Yorker claims she was fired by the journal after she raised issues that the publication’s workforce suffered from an absence of variety and from “gender inequality.”
Erin Overbey, an archive editor on the Condé Nast-owned weekly, posted a prolonged Twitter thread on Monday through which she vowed to file a grievance with the union.
She claims that she was scapegoated by the journal’s editors who blamed her for an error that was inserted into the copy of an article by David Remnick, the publication’s editor in chief.
However a supply with data of the state of affairs instructed The Put up that Overbey was fired for a “sample of conduct” that was deemed “disruptive to the operation of the Firm” and which “undermines the journalistic ethics of our journal.”
The Put up has additionally realized that Overbey was disciplined for “self-plagiarism” — or copying and pasting work that had already been revealed by the journal and reusing it phrase for phrase whereas presenting it as recent.
Overbey responded by saying that The New Yorker’s claims are “fully absurd.”
She instructed The Put up by way of electronic mail that the journal was utilizing the allegations of self-plagiarism and being “disruptive” as a result of “they do appear awfully keen to vary the topic from me being reprimanded for errors that Remnick added to repeat I used to be chargeable for.”
“Condé Nast itself gave me an award for excellent achievement & this allegation of ‘poor efficiency’ they’re claiming (the ludicrous nature of which I described in my thread final week) solely took place AFTER I began urgent on variety & gender inequality on the journal,” Overbey wrote in an electronic mail to The Put up.
“I started writing the thread in July; I've documentation to show it. If the corporate deems me ‘disruptive’ for citing problems with variety & gender, then that’s their downside.”
A spokesperson for Condé Nast instructed The Put up: “The New Yorker prides itself on professionalism, accuracy, and adherence to the best journalistic requirements.”
“False allegations that malign our journalistic integrity and that assault colleagues are inappropriate and unacceptable in our office,” the spokesperson added.
In keeping with Overbey, she was “put underneath a efficiency assessment shortly after sending an electronic mail elevating issues about gender inequality and inclusion on the journal.”
Overbey wrote that she despatched a company-wide electronic mail on June 14 decrying the shortage of variety at The New Yorker, which she “first began monitoring” again in 2019. Three days later, she mentioned, she was “put underneath a efficiency assessment.”
She cited a separate Twitter thread from final yr through which she referred to as out her journal for not publishing sufficient tales and articles by minority journalists.
“Does anybody understand how lots of the 40,000+ function & critics items that the New Yorker (the print magazine) has revealed in its 96-year existence have ever been edited by a Black editor?” she tweeted on Sept. 14, 2021.
She then listed a number of selections of “a) 6%, b) <2%, and c) <0.5%.”
Overbey then took intention at Remnick. “Within the final 15 years on the @NewYorker, throughout the tenure of editor-in-chief David Remnick (writer of a bio on Obama), lower than 0.01% of print function & critics items have ever been edited by a Black editor,” she tweeted.
Overbey then tweeted that the print version has revealed “solely 4 ebook opinions by African-American ladies.”
Within the 30 years stretching from 1990 to 2020, simply 3.6% of the ebook opinions revealed by the print version have been by African American critics or writers, in response to Overbey.
A supply on the journal instructed The Put up that simply days earlier than her tweet thread in September, she was given a remaining warning about self-plagiarism. The supply mentioned Overbey’s tweets about variety have been a foil for her poor efficiency.
The Put up has seen a duplicate of Conde Nast’s termination letter to Overbey. The letter mentioned that human sources had “repeated discussions associated to efficiency and behavioral issues.”
In Monday’s tweet thread, Overbey writes that the publication “by no means disputed the journal’s variety information that I offered” in September.
She additionally wrote that the journal “by no means disputed that my two weekly archive newsletters have persistently been the top-performing newsletters on the journal.”
“Everytime you increase issues, criticisms, or alarms about some of the highly effective establishments in media, they are going to use each software at their disposal to oppose you,” Overbey tweeted.
“That's their prerogative.”
She added: “However I'll defend myself within the strongest of phrases.”
Final month, the Washington Put up fired certainly one of its nationwide political reporters, Felicia Sonmez, for publicly lambasting the newspaper after it suspended a male colleague, Dave Weigel, who retweeted a joke that was deemed “sexist.”
Weigel was suspended for a month with out pay.
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