Bloodbath at the New York Times
Andy Mills and Donald McNeil resign within hours of each other
Hello friends, I wish I were cheerier, but since reading Andy Mills resignation letter this afternoon, which I was in the middle of writing a piece about internecine wars at newsrooms, most especially the New York Times, and then literally seconds before I hit “send” on the piece, seeing that Donald McNeil, too, was leaving. Both of these Times employees, make no mistake, are leaving under intense pressure from their colleagues, whose demands have grown so hyperbolic it would be funny as parody.
But it’s not parody. It’s the state of some of the biggest newsrooms in the country, on which we have relied to tell us the truth. I may, per usual, be Miss Optimistic, but the insanity of today’s resignations has a lot of people wondering why we are placing any faith in the paper of record, which, for the record, I think no longer deserves the title.
I owe you a longer letter, maybe about the three podcasts I’ve been on in the past three days - two with NYPD retired detectives! And certainly some cookies. Until then, here are Matt Welch and I talking about Don McNeil in the Paloma Media Podcast, episode 1. And here’s a teaser for episode 2, which you can watch in its entirety here.
With love and hot pie xx