The New Yorker has posted a follow-up to its report yesterday on Jill Abramson and her reported anger at a pay gap between her and her male predecessor at The New York Times. And now Ken Auletta has obtained concrete numbers of what may have been the actual pay disparity at play.
Auletta’s first report yesterday said Abramson was viewed as “pushy” in the newsroom, and she was angry that she got paid less than her predecessor did. The Times‘ publisher denied it and Auletta said that part shouldn’t be too overblown, but his report today provides more details about that detail.
According to Auletta’s report, Abramson hired a lawyer after learning about the pay gap; even discovering that when she was the paper’s managing editor, she earned less than the deputy managing editor. The report chronicles other instances that fed into the notion of Abramson as too “brusque” and difficult to work with.
Auletta then reports on numbers he’s been given to show exactly how serious the pay gap was.
As executive editor, Abramson’s starting salary in 2011 was $475,000, compared to Keller’s salary that year, $559,000. Her salary was raised to $503,000, and—only after she protested—was raised again to $525,000. She learned that her salary as managing editor, $398,000, was less than that of a male managing editor for news operations, John Geddes. She also learned that her salary as Washington bureau chief, from 2000 to 2003, was a hundred thousand dollars less than that of her predecessor in that position, Phil Taubman.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post mentioned a new Twitter account by Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. The Times has confirmed the Twitter account is a fake.
[image via screengrab]
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