Jill Abramson

Notable work and positions

Distinguished Professor of Practice and Senior Fellow at Northeastern University. Current

The New York Times — former Executive Editor (2011–2014); former Managing Editor (2003–2011); former Washington Bureau Chief (2000–2003)
The Wall Street Journal — former Deputy Washington Bureau Chief and investigative reporter (1988–1997)
Legal Times — former Editor-in-Chief
The American Lawyer — former Senior Staff Reporter
Harvard University — former Lecturer
Guardian US — former Political Columnist

Jill Ellen Abramson was born March 19, 1954, in New York City. She earned a bachelor's degree in history and literature from Harvard University and Radcliffe College in 1976, serving as arts editor of The Harvard Independent as an undergraduate and working at Time magazine from 1973 to 1976. After covering the 1980 presidential election for NBC News, she became a senior staff reporter for The American Lawyer in 1981 and was appointed editor-in-chief of the Washington, D.C. legal publication Legal Times in 1986, a post she held for two years. From 1988 to 1997, she was a reporter and later deputy Washington bureau chief at The Wall Street Journal, covering money and politics as an investigative reporter.

Abramson joined The New York Times in September 1997, becoming Washington editor in 1999 and Washington bureau chief in December 2000. She was named managing editor in August 2003, one of two top deputies overseeing the newsroom under then-executive editor Bill Keller. On September 6, 2011, she succeeded Keller as executive editor, becoming the first woman to hold the position in the paper's history. She is also the author or co-author of several books, including Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, an account of Justice Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation; Where They Are Now: The Story of the Women of Harvard Law 1974; and The Puppy Diaries: Raising a Dog Named Scout.

On May 14, 2014, New York Times Co. publisher and chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. abruptly removed Abramson as executive editor after two and a half years in the role, promoting managing editor Dean Baquet to replace her; the paper's own initial reporting said the reasons for the change were "not immediately clear." Sulzberger later told staff, and stated publicly, that the decision stemmed from concerns about Abramson's management of the newsroom, citing "arbitrary decision-making, a failure to consult and bring colleagues with her, inadequate communication and the public mistreatment of colleagues." Media reporting at the time, including by The New Yorker's Ken Auletta, raised the possibility that a dispute over pay and pension parity with her predecessor had contributed to her ouster; Sulzberger denied this, saying Abramson's total compensation in her final year was more than 10 percent higher than Keller's had been. Baquet told NPR that Abramson's departure followed "a significant disagreement" between her and both Sulzberger and himself, related in part to her plan to hire Guardian US editor Janine Gibson into a role with authority equal to his own.

After leaving the Times, Abramson became a lecturer at Harvard University and, beginning in March 2016, a political columnist for Guardian US from 2015 - 2019. In February 2019, she published Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts, examining The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vice and BuzzFeed. Before and after publication, Vice News correspondent Michael Moynihan and other journalists publicly identified passages in the book's chapters on Vice that closely resembled wording from The New Yorker, Time Out, the Columbia Journalism Review, the Ryerson Review of Journalism and a graduate thesis, without quotation marks or citation. Abramson initially disputed the characterization of the issue as plagiarism in a Fox News interview, while also stating she had not yet reviewed the specific allegations, and suggested some criticism stemmed from Vice's unhappiness with her portrayal of the company. In subsequent statements to the Associated Press and an interview with NPR, she acknowledged citation and sourcing errors in several passages, calling them unintentional and saying she "fell short" in properly attributing some material, and said corrections would be made.

Career highlights

1. First female Executive Editor, The New York Times, 2011. Became the first woman to lead the Times newsroom in the paper's history, succeeding Bill Keller on September 6, 2011.

2. Removal as Executive Editor, May 2014. Abruptly dismissed by publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. after two and a half years; Sulzberger cited management-style concerns, while a pay-equity dispute was also reported and disputed.

3. Merchants of Truth plagiarism allegations, 2019. Faced public allegations that passages of her book on Vice closely echoed other publications' work without citation; she acknowledged unintentional sourcing errors and pledged corrections.

4. Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas. Co-authored account of Clarence Thomas's contentious 1991 U.S. Supreme Court confirmation.