New Yorker editor fired over ‘inappropriate’ attacks on leadership

An editor at The New Yorker has been fired by the magazine after accusing its leadership of inserting errors into her work while she was under performance review.

Erin Overbey, an archive editor who has worked at the publication since 1994, wrote in a lengthy thread on Twitter Monday that she had been terminated by The New Yorker and planned to work with the employees union at the magazine to file a grievance over her termination.

Overbey alleged that she was put under a performance review shortly after sending an email raising concerns about gender inequality and inclusion at the magazine. She said during her firing that leadership at the magazine “never disputed that several errors that were cited in an email reprimanding me while I was under the performance review were not mine.”

Overbey called out the publication’s top editor, David Remnick, by name, saying he had inserted the errors into her copy.

“Whenever you raise concerns, criticisms, or alarms about one of the most powerful institutions in media, they will use every tool at their disposal to oppose you. That is their prerogative,” she wrote on Monday. “But I will defend myself in the strongest of terms.”

A spokesperson for Conde Nast, The New Yorker’s parent company, in a statement to several media outlets on Monday denied Overbey’s assertions and said the outlet “prides itself on professionalism, accuracy, and adherence to the highest journalistic standards.”

“False allegations that malign our journalistic integrity and that attack colleagues are inappropriate and unacceptable in our workplace,” the company said.

A termination letter sent to Overbey last week said she was being fired “due to a pattern of conduct that is disruptive to the operation of the company and undermines the journalistic ethics of our magazine,” the Daily Beast reported.

Overbey on Monday night accused Conde Nast of “targeting” her, telling the Daily Beast her firing was part of “a concentrated effort to target someone who wouldn’t shut up about certain issues that the magazine wanted them to shut up about.”

“This is specifically about the lack of diversity and the lack of pay equality at the magazine,” she said.