Erin Overbey
@erinoverbey
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Archive Editor, @NewYorker + Classics newsletter editor. NYer archivist since 1994. IG & Threads: erin.overbey https://t.co/sCm7ghjIVP
Joined March 2009
Let’s talk about racism! Most white people at prestigious magazines don’t ever want to talk about race or diversity at all. Why? It's primarily because they’ve been allowed to exist in a world where their mastheads resemble member registries at Southern country clubs circa 1950. .
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i really love Macklemore’s Hind’s Hall💯—but let’s not forget it was a Black rapper named Redveil who was the 1st artist to name all children killed in Gaza, call for a ceasefire & say “Free Palestine!” during a live concert. he was 19 & it was nov 12th.
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“women like us fall into two categories: dragons and fools. you must make sure they think of you as a dragon”. rip Maggie Smith💔 (1934-2024)
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Tina Fey had Jimmy Fallon dead to rights more than a decade ago in her memoir Bossypants. Will never forget this account about his exchange w/Amy Poehler in an SNL writers’ room…
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this is the kind of shit that led to the french revolution, lol😭.
This West Village home is insane . Anyone who’s lived in Manhattan knows just how insane it is to own a 600 ESF studio or classic 6 . Much less this home . The carriage house and outdoor space is my favorite
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So the @New Yorker has fired me, effective immediately. I’m speaking with the union about potentially filing a grievance on the termination. But here are some things that I will say….
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I.N.S.I.D.E.R. T.R.A.D.I.N.G.
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the funniest part of this cover is that when @newyorker actually had an employee who pointed out the lack of diversity & representation on its own staff—with no Black editor for articles hired in ~15 yrs—instead of thanking her they put her on a retaliatory PIP & fired her….
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comms team: we have to have chapell roan *somewhere* on this summer playlist….for the kidz. tim walz: ok! but the rest of this list is mmeeeeeeee💯🎸
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destroying archives—incl archives of political satire shows—is one of the first things authoritarian govts & systems do. the daily show & colbert show consistently spoke truth to power. this is a very dangerous trend, so i say this with my whole chest—. what👏the👏actual👏f**k👏
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haaretz & al jazeera out here making all of western media look like substitute junior varsity coaches at a suburban connecticut middle school.
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The @NewYorker has never contested the facts as I have stated them: 1) that I was put under a performance review shortly after sending an email raising concerns about gender inequality & inclusion at the magazine;.
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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.
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Legacy media in 2022 has proven that it’s incapable of accurately reflecting the world that it covers when its own industry is comprised primarily of white employees from privileged backgrounds. Period.
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2) that several errors that were cited in an email reprimanding me while I was under the performance review were not mine; and 3) that these were errors that David Remnick added to the copy.
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“i’m standing with people who’ve been pushed out of the frame…. i don’t believe you get to [invoke] shirley chisholm & fannie lou hamer—and then bankroll those bombs to be dropped on people”. Ta-Nehisi Coates speaking on Gaza & our political conscience🔥.
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dear reader, the audible gasp i gave when reading the emails a certain nepo baby journalist sent to a respected Stanford professor . these go beyond a sense of entitlement…this is something uglier. this level of disrespect toward a distinguished Black professor is just appalling
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Additionally, the @NewYorker has never disputed that my two weekly archive newsletters have consistently been the top-performing newsletters at the magazine, with unique open rates of ~72% and ~54%, respectively. Nor that the subscriber base is avid & comes in at around ~270K.
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The @NewYorker is, in many ways, a wonderful institution. But it’s also ground zero for a kind of regressive literary gatekeeping, class exclusivity & old-school cultural thinking that simply no longer have any relation to, or frankly relevance in, the modern world as we know it.
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The @NewYorker has also never disputed the magazine’s diversity data that I presented in a thread last year nor has it disputed the accuracy of my salary information which I highlighted in a thread on pay transparency & gender inequality back in March.
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The magazine has also not disputed the fact that, after raising my concerns, I was subjected to a performance review that entailed absurdly subjective interpretations of “factual inaccuracies,” bizarre charges of “disrespect,” and so on & so forth.
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Several yrs ago, when my @NewYorker newsletter hit a 70%+ unique open rate (as I've mentioned previously here), I noted this accomplishment to a male icon of journalism. I was pleased by this feat & thought he would be, too. Instead, he turned to me & said, “Now don’t get cocky!”.
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At the time, I was growing increasingly concerned that 1) no Black editors for feature pieces existed then at the @NewYorker; and 2) this meant that almost none of the longform feature pieces—those sent up for Pulitzers, etc.—had been edited by a Black editor in nearly 15 years.
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The email I sent reiterating my concerns about gender inequality in the workplace was sent on June 14th. I was put under a performance review on Friday, June 17th.
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i often revisit this Ta-Nehisi Coates interview (nov ‘23) where he spoke out on Gaza—& put the whole silent literary/media world on notice🔥. “dropping bombs on children, on refugee camps. i worry for the souls of people who can do this & sleep at night”.
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jfc. it’s becoming harder & harder to escape the harsh reality that western editors & mainstream media outlets &newsrooms simply do not view arab & palestinian journalists as colleagues worthy of the same human rights & protections of international law as their white counterparts.
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This seemed to me to be a major issue of concern. If less than 10 longform feature pieces (ie, excluding Fiction, Talk, Poetry) are edited by a senior Black editor within a 14-year span (w/~ 230 feature pieces pub’d a yr) at a magazine w/such a huge influence, something is wrong.
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The email I sent on June 14th was by no means the first email I’d sent about my concerns about diversity & inclusion at the @NewYorker. I’d been speaking out in-house (& subsequently publicly) for some time now.
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In fact, he possessed no prior background in archival work before he was hired to run the Archive Dept at the @NewYorker. We both applied for the job at the same time & I had ~ 17 yrs worth of archive experience. (I detailed a part of this in my salary thread this past March.).
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That summer, I also sent a note to management pointing out that I’d discovered the male Archive Editor who held the position before me (& was paid 20% more than I was making in the job) hadn’t possessed the minimum archive qualifications required in the job listing when posted.
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The magazine didn't inform me about his lack of archive qualifications when he was hired & I only found out about it later. This seemed to me to be highly problematic vis a vis gender equality & the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and I spoke up about this.
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Here are the facts. I first started tracking @NewYorker diversity data in 2019, as I’ve previously stated in several interviews. Here’s a screen shot with the exact dates showing that this is the case.
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The editor I asked to have removed—and who was then informed of my request—is the same editor who has included all of the so-called “factual inaccuracies,” allegations of “disrespect,” etc., in my recent performance review. A review then used, in part, to justify my termination.
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In May of 2021, I grew even more concerned. I learned that, during a union bargaining session w/the company, “diverse hires” were referred to by an outside proxy as “taking longer” & that it was asserted that “a diverse hire” is separate from “the right hire.”
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as we mark october 7th & one year of genocide in Gaza, i keep revisiting this feb 2023 post by a @newyorker journalist who saw a Palestinian man assaulted by an Israeli soldier right in front of him & focused on how dehumanizing it was for the SOLDIER. Western media has failed us.
I never had a source assaulted in front of me until today when an Israeli soldier who stopped my interview did this with a Palestinian peace activist Issa Amro in Hebron. I can't stop thinking how dehumanizing the occupation is on the young soldiers charged with enforcing it.
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I also wrote myself a note about this incident (intending to send it to management), but since the @NewYorker had taken to referring to my concerns about equality & inclusivity as “baseless accusations,” I sent it to myself instead (time-stamped).
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w.t.f. this is absolutely appalling. gabriella karefa-johnson is one of the best editors-if not THE best-& creative visionaries that @voguemagazine has. she was the 1st black woman to style a cover for american vogue(!). i really hope they rethink this decision. .
gabriella karefa-johnson (vogue editor and the mastermind behind all of these issues and more for those who don’t know her) no longer works at vogue magazine following her vocal support for palestine. this just can’t keep happening
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This appeared to anger them intensely; but I kept pressing the issue. Subsequently, in August of last year, I sent an email to management asking to work with a different editor due to editorial style & the sense that another editor who understood Classics would be a better fit.
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I may be an imperfect messenger, but I know enough to comprehend that there is never a “suitable” time for change. Change comes about because people refuse to wait for the suitable time. The now is always right now.
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What can’t be disputed, however, are the facts as I have presented them—since I have the documentation, screen shots & emails to back everything up.
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A few days after I requested a new editor, the magazine then hit me with an allegation of an instance of self-plagiarism. Again, it’s their prerogative to do so.
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this @nytimes column by thomas friedman comparing countries in the middle east to animals, pests & insects is so virulently racist it could have run in der sturmer or on radio rwanda pre-‘94 genocide. it’s appallingly offensive & friedman should be fired
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“Now don’t get cocky. ” Those words still echo in my ears. I don’t think I’ve ever, in all my years in journalism, heard a male journalist warned not to be “cocky” or told to be quiet about his professional achievements. But it’s something many women know & deeply understand. 2/.
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“The world is held together by the love & the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course you can despair. You could be that person, you could be that monster—and you have to decide, in yourself, not to be”. —James Baldwin, born 100 yrs ago today.
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So throw the gates wide open. The only bubbles that you’ll be bursting are your own—and they’re insular, privileged & white af. You’re not protecting a long-standing prestigious “journalistic legacy” You’re teaching a new generation exactly how to become dinosaurs.
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In 2020, I wrote a Classics archive newsletter about Burkhard Bilger’s terrific piece “Egg Men,” on Las Vegas short-order cooks. This piece, while fantastic, really has, in my opinion, one perfect quote & I used it in this newsletter.
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forgive me, but protesting is the patriotic duty of every American. i’m not sure who is advising Kamala but this is an unnecessarily harsh statement & a misstep that can dampen the enthusiasm & turnout of one of Dems’ crucial voting blocs. she should switch up her advisers/team….
Read my full statement on the protests in Washington, D.C. yesterday.
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But it did give them a weapon to use against me, and I think, for a time, they thought that would shut me up. And I understand that thinking.
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A year later, in 2021, I wrote ~5 lines in a Sunday reading post about a collection of magazine food pieces that referenced this piece, used the same quote, and also used similar lines that had appeared in the Classics newsletter a year prior.
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a few thoughts on the state of the VP stakes so far…. so i’ve studied political history for yrs & was one of <10% of Americans to correctly predict Trump would win in 2016. i believe the Dems VP pick is pivotal in this election & here’s why🧵.
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Classics newsletters are never published on the site; they are sent in newsletter format only. But fair enough; the point is taken, and it has never been repeated in any of my archive newsletters ever again.
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I’m sure the accusations from the magazine and its allies will come & will be swift. As I’ve said, it’s their prerogative. I’ll try to respond to any & all that come.
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I also understand if, after hearing this, you decide that you’d prefer to no longer follow me. That’s your choice & I completely respect it.
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is this a threat? is sr nepo journalist john podhoretz actually threatening my career over a tweet. ??. specifically,is @jpodhoretz claiming @newyorker—employer of star reporter & theo baker’s mom @sbg1—would professionally retaliate against any past or current employee for this?
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Why is this important? Because otherwise friendly, decent white people are really the bedrock upon which passive racism maintains its grip on media mastheads & editorial departments. And when ppl look up to you as an example for an entire industry, this shit is just embarrassing.
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I’ve been following the pay discourse on this site for a while & think it’s important for the movement toward salary transparency (particularly vis a vis gender & race) to continue to grow, so here’s my account. #internationalwomensday 1/.
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You see, one of the greatest tricks white liberalism ever pulled is convincing white ppl that it’s far worse to be called certain names—unlikable, hypocritical, etc.—than it is to remain passive & apathetic for literally decades in the face of a multitude of systemic injustices.
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Hi everyone, I’m overwhelmed at the level of response to this & support I’ve received. Thank you. more later. But right now (urgently), @NewYorker has refused an extension to August & my healthcare coverage is ending in 3 days. So thoughts,pls, which is better—COBRA or Obamacare?.
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In the last 15 years at the @NewYorker, during the tenure of editor-in-chief David Remnick (author of a bio on Obama), less than 0.01% of print feature & critics pieces have ever been edited by a Black editor.
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White people are rarely actively racist at these publications. They simply never bother to challenge the status quo—typically out of concern that they will be inconvenienced or made to feel uncomfortable. And so the status quo often remains entrenched for literally decades.
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As we watch what’s unfolding in Gaza, I keep returning to this Feb tweet by a journalist I respect who saw a Palestinian man assaulted by an Israeli soldier right in front of him & focused on how dehumanizing it was for the SOLDIER. Western media observes but lacks eyes that see.
I never had a source assaulted in front of me until today when an Israeli soldier who stopped my interview did this with a Palestinian peace activist Issa Amro in Hebron. I can't stop thinking how dehumanizing the occupation is on the young soldiers charged with enforcing it.
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Hey @nytdavidbrooks, remember when Carol Moseley Braun got on an elevator with Jesse Helms in 1993 & he started singing “Dixie,” then later said that he wanted to make her cry?. Because I sure do. And you should, too, since you were WSJ’s op-ed editor at the time. Have a nice day.
The most important story about why Americans have become sad and alienated and rude, I believe, is also the simplest: We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration.
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I believe we’re witnessing a sea change in the way thousands of women (& some men) in the media view their industry & in the way they feel able to speak out about industry injustices. And I believe that this sea change is frightening to those in power. 3/.
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this @newyorker piece by adam rasgon was one of the first-and worst-pieces of journalism to legitimize the baseless lie that palestinian journalists in gaza were promoting hamas propaganda—putting more journalists’ lives at risk. @nytimes hiring its author is shameful & a scandal
As @nytimes continues to come under fire for anti-Palestinian bias, Adam Rasgon is joining their Jerusalem bureau. Only days after Israel killed Al Jazeera’s Wael Al Dahdouh’s wife and children, Rasgon co-wrote a @NewYorker piece smearing Wael’s journalism as “Hamas propaganda.”
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what’s equally funny about this cover is @newyorker has spent recent yrs *boosting* its bylines by POC &JOC by shifting many of them into a kind of “digital ghetto,”where online pieces pay ~$350 vs ~$6500 for print. so running a cover about underpaid nannies of color is…a choice.
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israel has now outlawed expressions of palestinian joy. read that again. joy is not a crime;it’s an expression of hope & dignity in the face of adversity. so this weekend let’s highlight & uplift displays/expressions of palestinian joy. feel free to add to this🧵#palestinianjoy
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That’s all for now. I’m happy to answer any questions. And thanks for listening.
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So apparently, just as I predicted, several hit pieces incoming. I’m not going to mention the outlets because I happen to like media reporters & I’m such a sucker that I want to give even those filing negative stories their chance! These guys do hard work, too. .
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The male colleague at the magazine who added these errors to my copy while I was under performance review is David Remnick, the @NewYorker’s Editor-in-Chief. I don’t pretend to understand why he did this. I do know that he has intimate knowledge of Malcolm’s work & when she died.
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there’s an apocalypse happening in Gaza rn & over on Bluesky it’s crickets—yt ppl so comfortable in their safe space. forgive me, but white liberals leaving the so-called ‘nazi space’ & then spending 2 yrs never bothering to ask why there are so few Palestinian & arab voices.
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this is the worst production of king lear i’ve ever seen.
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i’ve made clear my analysis of Dems’ best picks for VP—Walz or Buttigieg; + Beshear. both Walz & Buttigieg are speaking of Dem policies in ways that are revolutionary—crafting deeply persuasive new arguments on Dem principles like school lunches, women’s privacy, health care, etc.
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So I was waiting for another hit piece to drop before responding to the @Gawker piece, but feel like it’s important to respond to this now. But first, does the @NewYorker still have a fact-checking dept?? Does @Gawker? So buckle up, kids—this will be a long one….
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After several weeks of dealing w/this circus, I have something I’d like to say about the @NewYorker, the legacy media world & the tactics of white hegemony.
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anthony bourdain was #botd in 1956. and i think often about this clip from parts unknown. bourdain believed in the dignity of all palestinians living in gaza—and he demonstrates more courage & honesty in this clip than nearly all western journalists today
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fiona apple released her debut album tidal 28 yrs ago today. everyone rightly cites shadowboxer, criminal, sleep to dream,etc—but this song for me (which apple wrote when she was 16 & which actually landed her a record deal at sony) is literally a prayer💫
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In its 96 years of existence, the @NewYorker print mag has published only 4 book reviews by African-American women. (That’s less than 0.01%.) In the last 30 years (1990-2020), 3.6% of the book reviews @NewYorker mag has published were by Black critics or writers.
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i tend to believe that kids are off limits. but when i got to baker’s line “suggests a sense of superiority i find remarkable” (4th)…holy jesus. so dear white people (particularly yt ppl of privilege), pls take the time to read these and then….do the exact opposite.
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wow. no…just no. thisis a bad take. alice munro’s daughter makes it clear munro knew about the abuse & stayed w/her stepfather anyway. this take is indicative of a literary world that too often prizes their icons’ reputations & preservations of legacy above all else—& it’s wrong
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Whenever you attempt to target and/or set a trap for an employee—especially an institutional critic—there’s always the risk of overreaching. It’s best to understand that, in going to such lengths to accuse someone, there’s always a chance of finding oneself caught instead. 40/.
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Israel just killed Mohammed Balousha, the Palestinian journalist who broke the story & revealed to the world the decomposing bodies of premature babies in the ICU left to die by Israeli forces at Al Nasr hospital last year. Nearly 200 Palestinian journalists have been killed by
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Being a female whistleblower—or any whistleblower, really—on diversity & gender inequality in the media industry is not easy. It’s actually quite difficult. I haven’t talked about this before but I will now (a bit)… 4/.
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“dropping bombs on children, on refugee camps. i worry for the souls of people who can do this & can sleep at night.”. ta-nehisi coates just put the whole silent literary/media community on notice🔥
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and it’s ironic that cover art is being used as racial street cred for media institution(s) that’ve been overwhelmingly white for yrs. bc the punchline is most top editors & writers at @newyorker & legacy media have their kids in private schools—& what’s their nanny situation. ?.
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The minutiae and the almost granular detail—the never knowing if you’re going to be called disrespectful or be told that you’re In error—is actually the point. It’s meant to keep you so preoccupied and distracted that you become too exhausted or overwhelmed to keep speaking out.
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Everything in the legacy media world, an establishment industry after all (no matter how progressive the publication), is geared toward keeping the status quo. And there’s tremendous pressure put on anyone who questions or seeks to change it. 5/.
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Walz, Buttigieg & Beshear represent a strong departure from thistype of reactive politics—instead each appearing to offer positive,assertive visions ofan America where govt is focused not on perpetual beltway outrage/gridlock but on tangible ways to improve Americans’ daily lives.
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this is endemic of a certain strain of liberalism where liberal institutions attempt to paper over their lack of progressivism w/symbolic gestures—hoping you’ll be so impressed with even the most basic acknowledgement of someone’s humanity that you’ll forget to look too deeply.
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For example, does anyone know how many of the 40,000+ feature & critics pieces that the @NewYorker (the print mag) has published in its 96-year existence have ever been edited by a Black editor? I’ll make this an easy one—multiple choice: . a) 6%.b) <2%.c) <0.5%.
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this is what Black professionals in academia, media & all industries have to deal with on a nearly daily basis. and many of us look the other way & pretend it’s not happening. it’s rare to find an example of the micro aggressions set down so vividly in writing.
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Fun fact about the @nytimes “working-class” champion & explainer Bret Stephens. He attended the private boarding school Middlesex, in Concord. The same school that became embroiled in controversy after it rescinded a speaking invitation to 1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones.
In Opinion. Joe Biden’s decision to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in student loans “just seems to me like yet another case of Democrats getting on the wrong side of working-class America,” Bret Stephens tells Gail Collins.
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Imagine someone pouring a bag of rice out on the floor and asking you to pick up every grain. Then imagine if, every time you spoke up about an injustice, another bag of rice was poured out & you were asked to stop and pick each grain up again. There’s a method to the madness.26/.
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