WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 24 (DPI) — Jill Abramson, newly installed executive editor of The New York Times, is promoting a book about her dog, to the dismay of journalists both inside and outside the paper’s newsroom.
Abramson, the first woman editor to lead the newspaper in its 160-year history, has long received high marks as a journalist. A profile this month in The New Yorker by veteran writer Ken Auletta paints a mostly glowing picture of the 57-year-old New York native.
Auletta writes that Abramson is also, according to quoted peers, “a blackbelt” at office politics, a strong personality often verbally abusive of subordinates and something of a suck-up to senior management. (One detail at the end of the piece: On her right shoulder she sports a tattooed image of a vintage New York Subway token.)
But the new release of a book about her dog — and Abramson’s current roadshow of it — could become an embarrassment to The Times.
“Abramson admits that she is self-conscious about her dog book being published during her second month as executive editor of the august New York Times,” Auletta wrote. “Say what you will about the grayer days of the Times in mid-century, but it was always hard to imagine James Reston writing a book about a beloved household pet.”
Abramson appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this week, as well as NPR, and spoke last week at “Politics & Prose” bookstore in Washington, all to promote her book, “The Puppy Diaries,” based on a series of NYTimes.com blog entries.
The Times even reviewed the book — glowingly — twice, and critics took notice:
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/10/jill_abramsons_1.php
The New York Observer wrote:
“The Puppy Diaries is not merely a poorly timed, half-endearing and half-embarrassing assemblage of personal anecdotes from the executive editor’s less high-profile past. The book is based on a Times blog of the same name, which taught Ms. Abramson a lot about digital journalism, she told Sam Tanenhaus on the Times’s Arts Beat books podcast.”
http://www.observer.com/2011/10/puppy-love-for-jill-abramson/
One recently departed journalist at The Times, privately of course, said his ex-boss’s book tour is “pretty strange, isn’t it?” Another added that a book deal by the boss serves as a green light for outside writing projects by staffers — an indication that free-lance writing by what’s left of staff may be seen as a way to retain underpaid journalists.
Editors added that it’s possible Abramson is fulfilling a previous contractual commitment in promoting the book. But if that’s the case, someone – The Times or Abramson herself — should be widely disclosing that, if only to thwart the obvious perception that the new editor has misplaced priorities.
