Sarah Jeong no longer works for the New York Times editorial board, according to a Saturday report from CNN.
Jeong, who drew media attention after being appointed to the board last year despite a series of anti-“white people” tweets, reportedly chose to leave her position last month, CNN reported.
Deputy editorial page editor Kate Kingsbury told CNN’s Oliver Darcy that Jeong’s role has shifted from employee to a contracted contributor for the outlet’s opinion page.
“Sarah decided to leave the editorial board in August,” Kingsbury told CNN, “but we’re glad to still have her journalism and insights around technology in our pages through her work as a contributor.”
From the CNN report:
In an emailed statement, Jeong said the change in role will allow her to “go back to reporting and writing long features while still being involved with NYT Opinion section on tech issues.” Jeong added, “The decision was hard because of the many wonderful colleagues I would have to leave behind, but I made the change so I can work on what I want to work on in the immediate moment.”
Jeong’s Friday tweet contradicting Guardian columnist Siva Vaidhyanathan’s attempt to get subscribers to not cancel their Times subscriptions because of the outlet’s decision to publish that the whistleblower is a CIA officer was interpreted many as a call to unsubscribe, CNN reported.
You’re wrong. 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.
— sarah jeong (@sarahjeong) September 27, 2019
But Jeong told Darcy she didn’t mean it as a “call to unsubscribe.”
“I’m just weary of having my name and my work invoked as a reason to not boycott,” she said. “A lot of people have done and continue to do great work at the Times. But if a reader has real, good-faith objections to certain editorial decisions, the fact that the paper has done great work doesn’t negate those objections.”
Jeong’s hiring last August despite her anti-white, anti-men, and anti-cop tweets led many to accuse the paper of a double standard, particularly because at the time it had recently fired Quinn Norton for derogatory tweets about minorities. (RELATED: Activist Wikipedia Editors Forbid Any Mention Of Sarah Jeong’s Racist Tweets In Her Page)
Democrats have redefined racism precisely so people like Sarah Jeong can say racist things and still get jobs at the New York Times. pic.twitter.com/ibjWFy5NLi
— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) August 2, 2018
The @nytimes hired and hours later fired @quinnnorton after learning about her past tweets that were less nakedly racist than Jeong’s. https://t.co/rlqjdGDfn1
— Will Racke (@hwillracke) August 2, 2018