The following email was sent by Gawker’s executive editor to former Gawker staff writer Dayna Evans. The email, sent on November 13, was written in response to a story by Evans about Gawker and its treatment of women. On the day it was expected to be published (after edits and approval from Gawker’s editor-in-chief Alex Pareene and Gawker’s legal team), John Cook emailed Evans and Leah Beckmann (the story’s editor) and explained that he’d be killing the piece after deciding that he was “done with Gawker writing about Gawker.” Here is the email in full.
Dayna-
I am killing your piece. The principal reason is external to the piece itself. I know that I told Leah back when you initially filed over the summer that, if it met the standards we would apply to a story on any other company, I would publish it. And I know that I told Alex on Thursday that, if you corrected certain inaccuracies and accounted for the role that Lacey Donohue plays in leading the editorial operation, I would publish it.
I’ve reconsidered, and I’m going back on my word, over Alex’s strenuous objections. I’m sorry for that. I’m done with the Gawker writing about Gawker. There is a long-standing ethos here of radical transparency, of the editorial staff using the sites to write about what goes on here in an open and honest way. I’ve long been proud of it, and participated in it. But we are a much larger company than we’ve ever been, with more at stake both in terms of careers and the future of the operation, and the perception from the chaotic events of the summer that we are too unruly and self-involved to put out quality stories and manage a motivated, contented staff has done real damage. I need to recruit, I need to assuage the fears and fatigue of many members of our current editorial staff over our perceived propensity for self-immolation, and I need to focus our staff on putting out good stories about other people and institutions, rather than talking about ourselves. You write, accurately, that Gawker was founded on excitement and freedom, but that “excitement and freedom can lead to dismissiveness and insensitivity, harm and marginalization, often unforgettable and unforgivable damage.” That’s the balance I’m trying to strike in deciding not to publish a piece that discusses staffers here in personal terms.
I also need to address the frustrations your piece gives voice to. The best way for me to do that is to talk to my staff and change the way we hire, manage, and promote. Publishing the piece would provide some measure of catharsis for people who feel that they haven’t been listened to, but it would be a short-term relief. The work that matters has to happen by me, in-house, not on the site. Maybe I will fall short, maybe I will succeed, but the measure of my commitment to making sure all of the editorial staff feel valued, motivated, and fairly treated is not in whether Gawker writes about the fact that many do not. It’s in whether and how I try to change that.
I trust that your piece will get published elsewhere, and I hope that it does. Since you never reached out to me for comment during the four-month reporting and editing process, I’ve laid out for you below my responses to some of your claims about me. I hope that when you do publish, you will include them in the final piece in some form. I should also say that another factor motivating my decision here is the fundamental incoherence of running a piece that makes claims about me, in which I am not quoted, and over which I have ultimate editorial control. In considering the changes I wanted in the piece, I was in a position of essentially deciding which shots I was willing to take and which I considered too cheap. It’s a dishonest and untenable role. I’m happy to be downgraded from top editor to subject.
• You reference my memo upon being named executive editor, and claim that there are no women in my ideal vision of Gawker Media. That memo concludes with the following paragraph: “Our executive managing editor Lacey Donohue has been instrumental in this interregnum, keeping the department operating and acting as a human shield and agent for me. While I was in an acting role, Lacey reported to Heather on personnel and budget matters. Going forward, she reports to me and is my right hand. She is tireless, fearless, and steady, and I am grateful to have her, Scocca, Pash, and Pareene continue to help us all do our best work.” I suspect that your inference about the role women play in my ideal vision is based on the fact that the two stories I called out in that memo were written by male writers. I would say to provide context that I was calling out those two stories not because I independently decided they were representative of what I want out of my staff, but in fact because they both happened to have been the subject of stories in that day’s New York Times: “witness today’s New York Times, which cites Bobby Finger’s reporting by name in an op-ed on Texas’ educational standards, and finally, at long last, and clearly against its will, weighs in on the effective end of accused child abuser Kevin Johnson’s political career at the hands of Deadspin’s Dave McKenna.”
• You write that “there is no direct upward motion for an aggressive woman at Gawker.” Lacey started at Gawker as a freelance night blogger in 2013, became the managing editor of Gawker.com in 2014, and became the executive managing editor of Gawker Media — one of only two editorial positions at Gawker Media that were considered too powerful to be in the union when it was voted in — in 2015.
• You write about “the creation of a new executive editorial team — cheekily called the Politburo, and featuring five male editors, all but one of them white, and two women in managing and deputy positions.” I think it’s worth noting that Politburo was created — and its membership determined — by Tommy Craggs, who is the one non-white editor you reference. The two women are Lacey and Jane-Claire Quigley. Lacey is the executive managing editor, Jane-Claire was not a deputy. She ran editorial operations.
• You take issue with the language I used in my memo to thank Leah. I can’t really say anything other than that my gratitude, as I expressed to Leah privately, was genuine and not intended to be “petty.” But I don’t think it’s quite accurate to describe her work as thankless in the context of my publicly thanking her, pettily or otherwise.
• You write that “Jezebel is largely ignored by upper management and the executive staff and left to do whatever they want,” and that one editor called it a “pink ghetto.” In my tenure both as investigations editor and executive editor, I have worked directly Emma Carmichael, Erin Gloria Ryan, Anna Merlan, and others repeatedly. I worked with Erin and Anna on an investigative project that never went anywhere, and consulted with Emma and Erin on personnel decisions, Anna on several stories she was pursuing, and Erin on an intensive video project. I have given repeated feedback both on stories that I liked and that I didn’t like. I have called out pieces like Joanna Rothkopf’s piece on the real story behind celebrated fashion outfit ShopJeen as model stories that “bring us audience, credibility, [and] impact.” This is not as closely as I have worked with Gawker or Deadspin, and that is a failing on my part that I am trying to address. But if any Gawker Media sites can be fairly described as “largely ignored by upper management,” they are Kotaku and Lifehacker, which have gotten far less direct attention from me than Jezebel. That’s a failure on my part, too. Executive features editor Tom Scocca has edited and advised on more Jezebel stories than he has for several other sites, including the Anna Merlan piece on online threats that you cite.
• “Cook could hardly muster a female writer’s name if [he] tried.” I hope you see from the foregoing that that’s inaccurate. I have publicly cited the reporting of Ashley Feinberg, Annalee Newitz, Joanna Rothkopf, Anna Merlan, Diana Moskovitz, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Natasha Vargas-Cooper, and others in memos and at our editorial meetings.
• You write that “a male higher-up shared a draft with others behind my back.” I’m not sure what that refers to, but I can’t conceive of what “behind your back” means in terms of our editorial process. Editors routinely share and discuss drafts with other editors, without necessarily notifying writers.
• You write that male editors “consistently drop stories, scoops, and tips into the laps of their male mentees.” This has been true, particularly of me, and reading your first draft back in the summer convinced me to take steps to change that behavior. I acknowledged it at a staff edit meeting recently, and have tried to send ideas and tips to a wider group at more sites, not just to the reporters with whom I’ve developed long-standing and comfortable relationships.
• You write that at “Gawker, where byline is associated with traffic and traffic is associated with success, the invisible labor in editorial management roles (the kind that actually enable growth) is often put to women who are frequently forgotten or replaced or moved around.” I take your point and don’t deny this dynamic. But it doesn’t do a very good job of describing the three posts that got the most traffic and attention since I started working as executive editor. Diana Moskovitz’s Greg Hardy scoops, bearing her name (because they are HERs) were edited and supported by Tim Marchman, Barry Petchesky, Puja Patel, and Kyle Wagner. Who is invisible there, and who is the star? Dee Barnes’ freelance contribution about her abuse at the hands of Dr. Dre was landed and edited by Rich Juzwiak with Kiese Laymon’s help. And Ashley Feinberg on the Duggars was edited and steered by Lacey. Is Lacey the invisible one there? And if so, who isn’t seeing her?
OK, sorry for the lengthy response. And sorry for changing my mind.
john
