I don’t know why Jill Abramson was fired as managing editor of the New York Times. I don’t know whether or not she was compensated fairly. I don’t know if a man in the same circumstances would have lost his job. But I do know that Megan McArdle said this:
Some reports said that she was fired after she complained that her predecessor, Bill Keller, had been paid more than she was — a contention that the New York Times disputes. As a good capitalist, I’m sympathetic to any boss who doesn’t want to pay his workers more than the minimum they’ll accept. Still, if you’ve ever met any people on your visit to our planet, you should be prepared for the possibility that this is going to come out — and that on that day, you’re going to have to sheepishly shrug your shoulders and up the pay packet.
Let that sink in for a while. Is there a better example of Stockholm Syndrome in journalism than this? Ms. McArdle is expressly endorsing the principle that capitalists should always offer the least compensation that prospective employees will accept. If they happen to know that women or minorities are prone to accept less compensation than white men for the same opportunity, they are totally justified in low-balling them. If this creates a shitstorm of negative publicity later on, that’s just the price of doing business the capitalist way, and they should be prepared to rectify matters in order to dull the sting of the ensuing bad public relations.
Megan McArdle isn’t a capitalist. She’s a journalist. If she belongs to a union it is the United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army .
