Teen Vogue Staff Issues Public Protest of Deleted ‘Racist and Homophobic Tweets’ from Incoming Editor-in-Chief Alexi McCammond

Reed RichardsonMar 8th, 2021, 8:26 pm
 
Alexi McCammond

Ed Rode/Getty Images

Condé Nast is facing a staff mutiny at Teen Vogue over the hiring of its new editor-in-chief.

According to a Daily Beast article published on Monday night, some of the online magazine’s staff began raising concerns over the past weekend about tapping the 27-year-old Axios reporter Alexi McCammond as top editor. The source of their concern involved her relative lack of experience compared to some current staffers as well as some deleted tweets from 2011 — when McCammond was 17 or 18 years old and in college — where McCammond mocked Asians and casually used “gay” and “homo” as insults.

Some Teen Vogue employees then went public with a protest letter on Monday, posting this note by the site’s politics editor Lucy Diavolo. Hours later, after an online deluge fueled by a certain high-profile, right-wing accounts, McCammond locked her Twitter account, allowing only her followers to see her posts.

As more than 20 members of the staff of Teen Vogue, we’ve built our outlet’s reputation as a voice for justice and change—we take immense pride in our work and in creating an inclusive environment. That’s why we have written a letter to management at Condé Nast about the recent hire of Alexi McCammond as our new editor-in-chief in light of her past racist and homophobic tweets. We’ve heard the concerns of our readers, and we stand with you. In a moment of historically high anti-Asian violence and amid the on-going struggles of the LGBTQ community, we as the staff of Teen Vogue fully reject those sentiments. We are hopeful that an internal conversation will prove fruitful in maintaining the integrity granted to us by our audience.

The statement appears to be alluding to several old tweets of McCammond’s that were screen-shotted and posted online in 2019 after former NBA star Charles Barkley physically threatened her. She apologized and deleted the tweets on November 20, 2019, saying: “Today I was reminded of some past insensitive tweets, and I am deeply sorry to anyone I offended. I have since deleted those tweets as they do not reflect my views or who I am today.”

Teen Vogue Staff Protest Alexi McCammond Tweets part 1Teen Vogue Staff Protest Alexi McCammond Tweets Part 2

On Monday evening, Condé Nast issued a response to the Daily Beast’s article. “Alexi McCammond was appointed editor-in-chief because of the values, inclusivity, and depth that she has deployed through her journalism,” the statement said of McCammond. “Throughout her career she has dedicated herself to being a champion for marginalized voices. Two years ago she took responsibility for her social media history and apologized.”

McCammond also responded, per Daily Beast reporter Max Tani, in a note to staff reprising her previous apology from 2019.

“You’ve seen some offensive, idiotic tweets from when I was a teenager that perpetuated harmful and racist stereotypes about Asian Americans,” she wrote. “I apologized for them years ago, but I want to be clear today: I apologize deeply to all of you for the pain this has caused. There’s no excuse for language like that.”

Both Condé Nast and McCammond’s notes make clear they have no intention of pulling back on the decision to hire her to run Teen Vogue.

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