New York Times Writer Bashes Paper’s Latest Hire Sarah Jeong, Then Apologizes

New York Times writer Elizabeth Williamson was brutally “ratioed” this afternoon — i.e. savaged by users on Twitter — after taking a shot at her newest colleague at the paper, Sarah Jeong.

Williamson tweeted an article from fellow New York Times writer Bret Stephens about Jeong, who has been the subject of scrutiny and center of controversy since past tweets bashing white people and police were uncovered last week.

Stephens’ op-ed defended Jeong against criticism over her tweets, and welcomed her to the editorial board:

So welcome, Sarah, to The Times. I look forward to reading you with interest irrespective of agreement. I trust you’ll extend the same good faith to all of your new colleagues. Only through such faith do the people, institutions, and nations thrive.

“Here’s @BretStephensNYT offering a classy welcome to a colleague who has yet to prove she deserves one,” Williamson wrote, linking to the piece.

At the time of the above screenshot, she had received 424 replies with zero retweets, a ratio of responses to retweets that is pretty much, without exception, indicative of a widely negative response.

Naturally, Williamson deleted the tweet, but not before drawing rage from media Twitter.

“What a phenomenally shitty thing to say,” observed HuffPost writer Ashley Feinberg.

A cool thing to do when your new colleague is being aggressively harassed because of a bad faith campaign cooked up by racists is to publicly shit on them some more

— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) August 9, 2018

The Daily Beast’s Asawin Suebsaeng was decidedly more subtle in his analysis, but swiped the the Times nonetheless.

Apropos of nothing, I am glad I work at a place where shit-tweeting your new young incoming colleague—who was just the target of an online targeting campaign based entirely on bad faith—does not fucking fly here.

— Asawin Suebsaeng (@swin24) August 9, 2018

Behold, Williamson’s apology:

I just deleted my earlier tweet about this column. It was inappropriate. I apologize. https://t.co/Z6tNMHHzMD

— Elizabeth Williamson (@NYTLiz) August 9, 2018

[Featured image via screengrab]

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