Sulzberger speaks on pay-gap flap
Joe Pompeo
New York Times publisher and Times Company chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. hit back Thursday at a report the previous day suggesting part of the reason he fired executive editor Jill Abramson was because she complained her compensation package was lower than that of her predecessor, Bill Keller.
"It is simply not true that Jill’s compensation was significantly less than her predecessors," Sulzberger wrote this afternoon in a memo to staff obtained by Capital. "Her pay is comparable to that of earlier executive editors. In fact, in 2013, her last full year in the role, her total compensation package was more than 10% higher than that of her predecessor, Bill Keller, in his last full year as Executive Editor, which was 2010. It was also higher than his total compensation in any previous year.
"This Company is fully committed to equal treatment of all its employees, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation or any other characteristic," the memo continued. "We are working hard to live up to that principle in every part of our organization. I am satisfied that we fully lived up to that commitment with regard to Jill."
Sulzberger was responding to a widely circulated New Yorker item by Ken Auletta, who wrote: "Abramson discovered that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, as managing editor were considerably less than the pay and pension benefits of Bill Keller, the male editor whom she replaced in both jobs."
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2014/05/8545465/sulzberger-speaks-pay-gap-flap