Good luck with that: New York Times searches for editor with a ‘spine of steel’

OPINION:

The New York Times put out a job listing this week, searching for a deputy opinion editor “with a spine of steel.” Good luck. Three of its editors recently left the Gray Lady in recent months, after facing newsroom backlash for posting columns from a conservative point of view.

The Times is recruiting someone that has “a sense of humor and a spine of steel, a confident point of view and an open mind an appetite for risk and exacting standards for excellence,” its job posting reads. 

An appetite for risk is exactly what any conservative applying for the job will need – for they most likely will be fired or canceled within months of accepting the position. 

Bari Weiss resigned from the paper’s opinion pages in July after she was bullied by her colleagues for not following their liberal group-think. In a blistering resignation letter, she claimed Twitter should be the new masthead for the Times and wrote “Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.”

Yet it does at the Gray Lady. 

Two of her coworkers followed her lead in the coming months, with former editorial page editor James Bennet and editorial assistant Adam Rubenstein both resigning because of their involvement in publishing Republican Senator Tom Cotton’s op-ed which called for military involvement in quelling last summer’s riots. The piece angered Times employees and sparked an internal revolt – with writers taking to Twitter to voice their disapproval of its publication.

It’s ironic the same Times staff that was infuriated by Mr. Cotton’s assertion the U.S. military should be deployed to “restore order to our streets,” now entirely support the militarization of our nation’s Capitol to help blunt pro-Trump protesters. 

But rational, dispassionate, logical and inclusive thinking is becoming rarer and rarer at the Times as they fall victim to the woke mob — which includes the vast majority of its newsroom. 

In November, New York Magazine reported on the internal drama within the Times, which said it was an “open secret” in the newsroom that the paper is “published by and for coastal liberals.” Many staffers interviewed agreed with Ms. Weiss’ assessment of it being a hostile workplace for those who don’t share its progressive values.

And indeed, it is. In addition to three of its former opinion page editors resigning, the Times hasn’t been a “safe-space” for its lonely Never-Trump Republican columnist Bret Stephens. Last month, the Times refused to publish one of his columns blasting the paper’s handling of an ousted Times reporter for using the n-word while leading a student trip to Peru years ago. It turns out the reporter used the word during a discussion of the word itself – but you know, the in-house mob at the Times, decided he was a threat to their personal safety regardless – and had to go.

So good luck to whoever applies to be the Times’ new deputy opinion editor. There’s only one mentality that survives there: woke tribalism. 

As Ms. Weiss wrote in her resignation letter — there are three rules you must abide by to work at the Gray Lady successfully: “Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll be hung out to dry.”