NY Times Ed. Board Member, As #CancelNYT Trends: Subscriber Cancellations ‘Can Back Up Dissenting Views Inside Paper’

New York Times editorial board member Sarah Jeong claimed on Friday that the Times “does pay attention to subscriber cancellations,” and they “can back up dissenting views inside the paper.”

“NYT does pay attention to subscriber cancellations. It’s one of the metrics for ‘outrage’ that they take to distinguish between ‘real’ outrage and superficial outrage. What subscribers say can back up dissenting views inside the paper about what it should do and be,” Jeong claimed in two posts to Twitter. “I’ve eschewed children and a mortgage exactly so I can have the freedom to follow my conscience. I will not dissuade anyone else from following their conscience as well.”

A group of New York Times subscribers voiced their plans to cancel their subscriptions this week in protest of the newspaper’s attempts to find out the identity of the Trump-Ukraine whistleblower.

After the newspaper reported that the whistleblower “is said to be a CIA officer who was assigned to work at the White House,” some readers called on Executive Editor Dean Baquet to resign, and threatened to cancel their subscriptions if he did not.

This led to the hashtag #CancelNYT trending on Twitter this week.

https://twitter.com/seankent/status/1177322475522265100

Jeong joined the New York Times, and was appointed to its editorial board, in August 2018.

The appointment generated heavy controversy due to a series of racist Twitter posts that Jeong had made previously, however the newspaper published a statement standing by its then-new hire.

“She understands that this type of rhetoric is not acceptable at The Times, and we are confident that she will be an important voice for the editorial board moving forward,” the newspaper declared.

UPDATE — 10:12 pm ET: CNN’s Oliver Darcy reports in Friday night’s Reliable Sources newsletter that Jeong is no longer a member of the editorial board:

A spokesperson for NYT told me Jeong is no longer an employee, but has shifted to being a contracted contributor for NYT Opinion. “Sarah decided to leave the editorial board in August,” said Kate Kingsbury, deputy editorial page editor, “but we’re glad to still have her journalism and insights around technology in our pages through her work as a contributor.”