Jill Ellen Abramson (born March 19, 1954) is an American author, journalist, and academic. She is best known as the former executive editor of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''; Abramson held that position from September 2011 to May 2014. She was the first female executive editor in the paper's 160-year history. Abramson joined the ''New York Times'' in 1997, working as the Washington bureau chief and managing editor before being named as executive editor. She previously worked for ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' as an investigative reporter and a deputy bureau chief.
In March 2016, she was hired as a political columnist for ''
Guardian US
''Guardian US'' is the Manhattan-based American online presence of the British print newspaper ''The Guardian''. It launched in September 2011, led by editor-in-chief Janine Gibson, and followed the earlier ''Guardian America'' service, which wa ...
''. In 2019, she received widespread criticism from journalists after her book '' Merchants Of Truth'' was found to contain plagiarized passages and numerous factual errors.
In 2012, she was ranked number five on ''Forbes'' list of most powerful women. She was also named as one of the 500 most powerful people in the world by ''
Foreign Policy
A State (polity), state's foreign policy or external policy (as opposed to internal or domestic policy) is its objectives and activities in relation to its interactions with other states, unions, and other political entities, whether bilaterall ...
''.
Early life and education
Abramson was born in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
and grew up in a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
home. She received her high school diploma from
Ethical Culture Fieldston School
Ethical Culture Fieldston School (ECFS), also referred to as Fieldston, is a private independent school in New York City. The school is a member of the Ivy Preparatory School League. The school serves approximately 1,700 students with 480 facult ...
and a BA in History and Literature from
Radcliffe College
Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...
of
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
in 1976.
Career
While a
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
undergraduate, she was the arts editor of ''
The Harvard Independent
''The Harvard Independent'' is a weekly newspaper produced by undergraduate students at Harvard University. It is one of the leading hard-news media outlets on the Harvard undergraduate campus. It is the oldest weekly newspaper in Cambridge, Massa ...
'', and worked at ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine from 1973 to 1976. Subsequently, she spent nearly a decade as a senior staff reporter for ''
The American Lawyer
''The American Lawyer'' is a monthly legal magazine and website published by ALM Media. The periodical and its parent company, ALM (then American Lawyer Media), were founded in 1979 by Steven Brill. In 1986, she was appointed as editor in chief of ''
Legal Times
ALM (formerly American Lawyer Media) is a media company headquartered in the Socony–Mobil Building in New York City, and is a provider of specialized business news and information, focused primarily on the legal, insurance, and commercial rea ...
'' in Washington, D.C., serving for two years. From 1988 to 1997, she was a senior reporter in the Washington bureau of ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'', eventually rising to deputy bureau chief. She joined ''The New York Times'' in 1997, becoming its Washington bureau chief in December 2000.
Abramson was the ''Times Washington Bureau chief during the turbulent period of Spring 2003 during the run-up to the war in Iraq and the
Jayson Blair
Jayson Thomas Blair (born March 23, 1976) is an American former journalist who worked for ''The New York Times''. He resigned from the newspaper in May 2003 in the wake of the discovery of fabrication and plagiarism in his stories.
Blair publi ...
scandal, which led to the resignation of Executive Editor
Howell Raines
Howell Hiram Raines (; born February 5, 1943) is an American journalist, editor, and writer. He was executive editor of ''The New York Times'' from 2001 until he left in 2003 in the wake of the scandal related to reporting by Jayson Blair. In 20 ...
and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd. In a February 2013 interview, Abramson spoke of the conflict she had with Raines as D.C. bureau chief, saying, "Howell from the get-go just had no use for me. ... I did think about quitting." Abramson was named to the news managing editor position (with co-Managing Editor
John M. Geddes
John M. Geddes is an American journalist who served as one of two managing editors of ''The New York Times''. He was appointed to that post in 2003, and left it in 2013. Geddes served as managing editor for news operations. He and Jill Abramson we ...
) by Raines' successor
Bill Keller
Bill Keller (born January 18, 1949) is an American journalist. He was the founding editor-in-chief of '' The Marshall Project'', a nonprofit that reports on criminal justice in the United States. Previously, he was a columnist for ''The New Yo ...
.
In 1995, Abramson and her ''The Wall Street Journal'' colleague (and fellow Fieldston alumna)
Jane Mayer
Jane Meredith Mayer (born 1955) is an American investigative journalist who has been a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' since 1995. She has written for the publication about money in politics; government prosecution of whistleblowers; the Uni ...
co-authored ''Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas'', which detailed circumstances surrounding the confirmation hearings of Justice
Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall and has served since 199 ...
.
Maureen Dowd
Maureen Brigid Dowd (; born January 14, 1952) is an American columnist for ''The New York Times'' and an author.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, Dowd worked for ''The Washington Star'' and ''Time'', writing news, sports and feature articles. ...
would later write of having bonded with Abramson during that time. From 2000 to 2001, she was a professor at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
. She was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
in 2001.
In February 2007, Abramson testified in the
perjury
Perjury (also known as foreswearing) is the intentional act of swearing a false oath or falsifying an affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to an official proceeding."Perjury The act or an inst ...
trial
In law, a trial is a coming together of Party (law), parties to a :wikt:dispute, dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence (law), evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to Adjudication, adjudicate claims or d ...
of
Scooter Libby
Irve Lewis "Scooter" Libby (born August 22, 1950) is an American lawyer and former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney known for his high-profile indictment.
From 2001 to 2005, Libby held the offices of Assistant to the Vice President ...
, '' United States v. Libby''. She was called as a defense witness to undercut the credibility of
Judith Miller
Judith Miller (born January 2, 1948) is an American journalist and commentator known for her coverage of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) program both before and after the 2003 invasion, which was later discovered to have been based on ...
.
In 2010, Abramson worked on news content on the ''Times'' website for six months.
On June 2, 2011, Abramson became the executive editor of the ''Times,'' replacing Bill Keller who stepped down from the position to become a full-time writer.
Abramson was scheduled to address the commencement exercises of
Barnard College
Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...
on May 14, 2012. Her speech was canceled after President
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
requested to speak instead. She received an honorary degree at
Fairleigh Dickinson
Fairleigh Dickinson University is a private university with its main campuses in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Founded in 1942, Fairleigh Dickinson University currently offers more than 100 degree programs to its students. In addition to its tw ...
's 69th Commencement Ceremony in May 2012.
In April 2013, Abramson was the subject of a sharply critical profile in ''
Politico
''Politico'' (stylized in all caps), known originally as ''The Politico'', is an American, German-owned political journalism newspaper company based in Arlington County, Virginia, that covers politics and policy in the United States and intern ...
'' written by Dylan Byers entitled "Turbulence at the Times," in which anonymous ''Times'' staffers called her "impossible" and "very, very unpopular." Abramson was deeply distressed by the report, later saying it made her cry.
On May 14, 2014, Abramson was fired from her position as executive editor of the ''Times'', and
Dean Baquet
Dean P. Baquet (; born September 21, 1956) is an American journalist. He served as the executive editor of ''The New York Times'' from May 2014 to June 2022. Between 2011 and 2014 Baquet was managing editor under the previous executive editor Ji ...
succeeded her in that role. Abramson was reportedly fired because of "her arbitrary decision-making, a failure to consult and bring colleagues with her, inadequate communication, and mistreatment of colleagues". Five days later, she delivered the commencement address at Wake Forest University. In June 2014, it was announced that Abramson had joined the English department at Harvard, and would teach classes on writing narrative nonfiction.
During the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Abramson argued in a column for ''
Guardian US
''Guardian US'' is the Manhattan-based American online presence of the British print newspaper ''The Guardian''. It launched in September 2011, led by editor-in-chief Janine Gibson, and followed the earlier ''Guardian America'' service, which wa ...
'' that
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
, whom she had covered as a reporter and editor since the
Whitewater controversy
The Whitewater controversy, Whitewater scandal, Whitewatergate, or simply Whitewater, was an American political controversy during the 1990s. It began with an investigation into the real estate investments of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their ass ...
, was "fundamentally honest and trustworthy."
On February 19, 2018, Abramson followed up her 1995 book on
Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall and has served since 199 ...
and the
Anita Hill
Anita Faye Hill (born July 30, 1956) is an American lawyer, educator and author. She is a professor of social policy, law, and women's studies at Brandeis University and a faculty member of the university's Heller School for Social Policy and ...
hearings with a discussion concerning new evidence that Thomas had committed perjury which might be tied to possible impeachment.Jill Abramson "Do You Believe Her Now?" ''New York Magazine''. February 19, 2018. Abramson indicated that her reporting was initiated by an article by the journalist Marcia Coyle from 2016 when Abramson stated, "Tipped to the post by a Maryland legal source who knew Smith (who made the allegations), Marcia Coyle, a highly regarded and scrupulously nonideological Supreme Court reporter for ''The National Law Journal'', wrote a detailed story about (Moira) Smith’s allegation of butt-squeezing, which included corroboration from Smith’s roommates at the time of the dinner and from her former husband. Coyle’s story, which Thomas denied, was published October 27, 2016".
In December 2018,
Fox News
The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...
reported that Abramson's book '' Merchants of Truth'' criticized her former employer the ''Times'' of abandoning objectivity and becoming "anti-Trump" to bolster profits. Abramson responded by stating that the ''Fox News'' review "distorts and takes what I wrote totally out of context" and praised the ''Times'' along with ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' for their "superb coverage of the corruption enveloping the Trump administration, the best investigative reporting I’ve seen."
In February 2019,
Vice News
Vice News (stylized as VICE News) is Vice Media's current affairs channel, producing daily documentary essays and video through its website and YouTube channel. It promotes itself on its coverage of "under-reported stories". Vice News was create ...
correspondent
Michael C. Moynihan
Michael Christopher Moynihan (born August 24, 1974) is an American journalist, National Correspondent for ''Vice News'' and co-host of ''The Fifth Column'' podcast. He was previously the cultural news editor for '' The Daily Beast/ Newsweek'', ...
said Abramson's book ''Merchants of Truth'' contained several instances of
plagiarism
Plagiarism is the fraudulent representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 '' Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close imitation of the language and thought ...
, posting a series of tweets comparing passages of the book to passages of other publications, including '' Time Out'', ''The Ryerson Review of Journalism'', ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', '' The Columbia Journalism Review'', and other works. In a February 7 interview on Fox News, Abramson said she had no comment on the plagiarism accusations, but later that evening said she would review the passages in question. However, in an interview with NPR's Michel Martin, Abramson admitted that she "fell short" in attributing her sources for some passages of the book. In an interview with CNN's Brian Stelter, Abramson said that most of the plagiarized text was cited in footnotes, but that was she was sorry that a few piece of text were not. Stelter pointed out to Abramson that lifting words from other sources and citing footnotes is still considered plagiarism.
Personal life
In 1981, she married Harvard classmate Henry Little Griggs III. Griggs was then president of Triad, a political public relations company. He is self-described as a "writer, editor and media-relations consultant specializing in nonprofit advocacy campaigns." They have two children.
In May 2007, Abramson was seriously injured in a
truck
A truck or lorry is a motor vehicle designed to transport cargo, carry specialized payloads, or perform other utilitarian work. Trucks vary greatly in size, power, and configuration, but the vast majority feature body-on-frame construction ...
-
pedestrian
A pedestrian is a person traveling on foot, whether walking or running. In modern times, the term usually refers to someone walking on a road or pavement, but this was not the case historically.
The meaning of pedestrian is displayed with ...
crash near the ''New York Times''
headquarters
Headquarters (commonly referred to as HQ) denotes the location where most, if not all, of the important functions of an organization are coordinated. In the United States, the corporate headquarters represents the entity at the center or the to ...
in
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection, tourist destination, entertainment hub, and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is formed by the junction of Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and 42nd Street. Together with adjacent ...
. She subsequently filed a lawsuit against the truck's driver, owner, and operator, who was involved in the crash, as well as two companies involved in the crash.
In August 2010, Abramson was seriously injured while hiking in
Yellowstone National Park
Yellowstone National Park is an American national park located in the western United States, largely in the northwest corner of Wyoming and extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the 42nd U.S. Congress with the Yellowston ...
. Suffering a broken arm and back injuries, she was airlifted to
Billings, Montana
Billings is the largest city in the U.S. state of Montana, with a population of 117,116 as of the 2020 census. Located in the south-central portion of the state, it is the seat of Yellowstone County and the principal city of the Billings Metrop ...
for corrective surgery, which resulted in a full recovery.
Abramson has four tattoos on her body that she describes as "telling the story of me." They include a
New York City Subway
The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October 2 ...
token; the letter "H," representing her alma mater,
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, and her husband, Henry; and the letter "T" in the Gothic font of the ''New York Times'' logo. Abramson first unveiled her ''New York Times'' tattoo on a New York interview show less than a month before being fired from the paper, saying that it, along with the 'H' tattoo represent "the two institutions that I revere, that have shaped me." She has called her ''Times'' tattoo, which is emblazoned on her back, her "personal
hieroglyphic
Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...
." However, although she worked at ''The Wall Street Journal'' for 10 years, she elected to not be similarly marked by that newspaper because "It just wasn't in my family's blood."
Bibliography
* ''Where They Are Now: The Story of the Women of Harvard Law 1974.'' New York: Doubleday, 1986. , OCLC 12314642
* With Jane Mayer: ''Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas.'' New York:
Houghton Mifflin
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star.
Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publ ...