A longtime New Yorker employee criticized the publication Tuesday for maintaining an allegedly sexist workplace culture despite its liberal editorial bend.
Erin Overbey authored a thread of over 40 tweets in which she claimed that her bosses initiated a performance review of her work only after she raised private and public concerns about diversity and gender parity in legacy media workplaces. She has worked for the New Yorker since 1994, according to her profile on the magazine’s website. (RELATED: Columbia Journalism Review Endorses One-Sided Journalism In Trans Athlete Debate)
Overbey proceeded to accuse the magazine’s editor-in-chief, David Remnick, of retroactively inserting errors into her work as she faced the review. She alleged that two new errors in particular “were NOT [her] errors” and “were added to [her] copy by a male colleague who knew that [she] was under a performance review & could be penalized or reprimanded severely for them.” She singled out Remnick by name in the thread.
The errors in question were identified in the magazine’s standard pre-publication editorial process rather than in already published work, a person familiar with the matter told the Daily Caller.
Several yrs ago, when my @NewYorker newsletter hit a 70%+ unique open rate (as I’ve mentioned previously here), I noted this accomplishment to a male icon of journalism. I was pleased by this feat & thought he would be, too. Instead, he turned to me & said, “Now don’t get cocky!”
— Erin Overbey (@erinoverbey) July 19, 2022
“Publications or legacy magazines that happily publish feature pieces on the lack of diversity in other fields may often use tactics ranging from icing you out professionally to workplace penalties to keep people from speaking up about inequality in their workplace,” Overbey said in the tweets.
In the past several years, the magazine has published pieces such as “The Guggenheim’s Marathon of Misogynist Music” and “The Dehumanizing Sexism Of The Harvard Men’s Soccer Team’s ‘Scouting Report’.” A search of the magazine’s digitally-published works reveals that the New Yorker examines plenty of other instances of sexism and gender inequality in American society. (RELATED: New Yorker Fact Checker Resigns After Falsely Accusing ICE Officer Of Having Nazi Tattoo)
“The New Yorker is deeply committed to accuracy, and to suggest that anyone here would ever knowingly introduce errors into a story, for any reason, is absurd and just plain wrong,” a New Yorker spokesperson said in a statement to the Daily Caller.
Beyond that statement, the New Yorker did not answer questions regarding whether the magazine believes it has a primary obligation to address claims of sexism within its own walls, given that it has highlighted instances of inequality in other institutions.