Technology reporter Quinn Norton was let go by the New York Times only a few hours after her appointment was made public. New York Times.
The New York Times dismissed Quinn Norton on Tuesday, just hours after unveiling the technology journalist as the newest addition to its editorial board, as a wave of criticism erupted over her social media activity.
The publication revealed at noon PT that Norton, previously of Wired, would be coming aboard as the editorial board's chief opinion writer covering technology. Yet roughly six hours afterward, her employment had ended after Twitter users quickly began pointing to earlier tweets where she had used racist and homophobic language.
A significant number of critics zeroed in on an October post in which she described being friends with Andrew Auernheimer, a jailed hacker known as "weev" who also ran The Daily Stormer, a white supremacist website.
"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," she wrote in the post.
Meanwhile, several additional posts, largely from years earlier, emerged showing her repeatedly using a derogatory word for gay people and sharing a racist slur.
Her exit from the Times was disclosed in a statement credited to James Bennet, the paper's editorial page editor.
"Despite our review of Quinn Norton's work and our conversations with her previous employers, this was new information to us. Based on it, we've decided to go our separate ways," Bennet stated in a tweet shared by the paper's communications team.
Norton could not be reached immediately for comment, but posted on Twitter: "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."
In a separate post, Norton clarified that she did not back Auernheimer.
Not long after her appointment was revealed Tuesday, Norton wrote in a blog entry that the Times staff she had spoken with "made it clear that they weren't going to get put off by a little weird. As for how weird, well that's for them to discover."
Beyond her writing on technology and racism, Norton also wrote about and was in a relationship with Aaron Swartz, the online activist who died by suicide in 2013 while facing prosecution for allegedly downloading a massive trove of academic journal articles.
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