The new order snowflake staff at The New York Times put so much pressure on op-ed editor James Bennet, after he published a Tom Cotton op-ed calling for US troops to be used against protesters, that he resigned.
No doubt, Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger was behind the resignation.
Clearly, Sulzberger has never read Vox Day's SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police. It would have taught him how to deal with snowflakes on attack.
Now, he is losing subscribers and the old order staff at the Times thinks he has no backbone.
The latest from The Daily Beast:
“I really lament the loss of a talent that I respect and admire more than you could know,” Sulzberger, 39, told The Daily Beast about Bennet’s abrupt forced resignation this past Sunday—a mere four days after Bennet’s deputy Jim Dao and a junior editor, former Weekly Standard staffer Adam Rubenstein, published Cotton’s online screed. It was jarringly titled “Send in the Troops,” a polemic in which the Donald Trump-loving Republican demanded that the U.S. military be deployed in response to widespread protests against police brutality.-RW
“But at the end of the day, the most important thing, when you have these crises, is: Can you show up on Monday morning and lead the team out of it,” Sulzberger added. “I really regret that the answer we all got [for Bennet] was ‘no.’”
Sulzberger offered no further on-the-record comment about a debacle that has raised questions among journalists both inside and outside the Times about his leadership of the paper, provoked a public outcry and a larger-than-usual number of subscription cancellations, and challenged the Times’ commitment to publishing unpopular and even unpalatable opinions.
Bennet’s dismissal even alarmed—of all people—rocker Sean Ono Lennon. “This is the end for you guys,” John Lennon’s younger son tweeted in what might have been the unkindest cut of all. “Firing someone for allowing different opinions in your paper means you are no longer a real news paper [sic]. It’s been fun. You had a good run. The best in fact. R.I.P.”
Critics of A.G. Sulzberger’s handling of the crisis cited his confusing response to the uproar. The morning after the Cotton article went online June 3rd and prompted a staff mutiny, he sent a letter to employees that seemed to support Bennet’s initial defense of the piece—namely, as Bennet wrote on June 4, that “the public would be better equipped to push back if it heard the argument and had the chance to respond to the reasoning… Readers who might be inclined to oppose Cotton’s position need to be fully aware of it, and reckon with it, if they hope to defeat it.”
In his own letter on that morning, A.G. wrote: “I believe in the principle of openness to a range of opinions, even those we may disagree with, and this piece was published in that spirit.”
Yet barely five hours later, Sulzberger and the Times whipsawed staffers with a head-spinning about-face.
“We’ve examined the piece and the process leading up to its publication,” the paper’s spokeswoman, Eileen Murphy, said in a statement. “This review made clear that a rushed editorial process led to the publication of an Op-Ed that did not meet our standards. As a result, we’re planning to examine both short-term and long-term changes, to include expanding our fact-checking operation and reducing the number of Op-Eds we publish.”
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