On Tuesday afternoon, The New York Times announced a new hire: Quinn Norton, a journalist and an essayist known for her work at Wired magazine. The Times hired her as the editorial board’s lead opinion writer on technology. But by Tuesday evening, Norton said in a Twitter post that she would not be joining The Times. What happened?
Between Tuesday afternoon and evening, a social media storm had erupted because of her use of slurs on Twitter and her friendship with Andrew Auernheimer, who is known as an internet troll who goes by the name “weev.” Auernheimer now works for The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website. The Twitter campaign focused on one of Norton’s tweets from October. She says, “weev is a terrible person, & an old friend of mine.” People also dug up tweets where Norton used slurs against gay people and another in which she retweeted a racial slur.
can you address these? pic.twitter.com/Kfl4Bzpv5O
— Pesach ‘Pace’ Lattin ⏺ (@pacelattin) February 14, 2018
No. They were all forced to renounce him. But, well, a couple of Quinn Norton tweets sum it up quite well. pic.twitter.com/h77ecBBJRv
— Umfuld Johnson (@Umfuld) October 29, 2017
Weev is a terrible person, & an old friend of mine. I’ve been very clear on this. Some of my friend are terrible people, & also my friends.
— Well that was fun. (@quinnnorton) October 29, 2017
James Bennet, the editorial page editor of The Times, said that though the paper did a review of Norton’s work and talked to previous employers, this was “new information. Based on it, we’ve decided to go our separate ways.”
Norton was not available for comment, but tweeted, “I’m sorry I can’t do the work I wanted to do with them. I wish there had been a way, but ultimately, they need to feel safe with how the net will react to their opinion writers.”
As I said so many times to the @nytimes, no harm no foul. I’m sorry I can’t do the work I wanted to do with them. I wish there had been a way, but ultimately, they need to feel safe with how the net will react to their opinion writers.
— Well that was fun. (@quinnnorton) February 14, 2018
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