Yet another conservative columnist is leaving a well-known news outlet for having a difference of opinion. Andrew Sullivan, who has worked at New York Magazine since 2016, announced that he will be leaving the magazine at week's end.
Sullivan's departure from New York Magazine comes after Bari Weiss’ shock announcement that she was leaving her post as an editor for the New York Times' opinion section.
Reasons for Sullivan’s departure “self-evident”
Sullivan announced his departure from the magazine through a series of tweets on Tuesday afternoon. As part of the series, he stated that the underlying reasons for his departure were “self-evident,” though he declined to elaborate further. Instead, he said that he would discuss the “broader questions involved” in his final column for the magazine, set to run Friday.,
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Unlike the similar, high-profile, departures of editors from the New York Times, Sullivan's departure from New York Magazine seems to be much more amicable.
“I’m sad because the editors I worked with there are among the finest in the country,” wrote Sullivan on his thread. “And I am immensely grateful to them for vastly improving my work.”
“I have no beef with my colleagues, many of whom I admire and are friends,” he added.
While Friday’s column will be Sullivan’s last for New York Magazine, he stated that he would be continuing it elsewhere.
Dissenting opinions crowded out
Prior to his announcement, Sullivan had already expressed concern that a “woke” culture was crowding out dissenting opinion.
In a column titled “Is There Still Room to Debate?” Sullivan wrote about the ongoing campaign to quell dissent from the central idea that society’s evils stem from racism and discrimination against Blacks.
“In these past two weeks, if you didn't put up on Instagram or Facebook some kind of slogan or symbol displaying your wokeness, you were instantly suspect,” he wrote in the column which ran on June 12.
That same month, Sullivan was allegedly banned by the magazine from writing about the widespread protests that rocked the U.S. following from the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody.
Sullivan had announced that his column would not be running in mid-June. In its U.S.-focused blog Cockburn, U.K. news outlet The Spectator claimed that this was because New York Magazine's editors did not want Sullivan writing about the protests.
The Spectator cited a source close to New York Magazine which said that Sullivan had to have his work vetted by junior editors who had to make sure his work wouldn't trigger them before being published.
Neither Sullivan nor New York Magazine commented on the post. Comments from the latter’s editor-in-chief, David Haskell, seem to be trying to paint a different picture.
“Andrew and I agreed that his editorial project and the magazine's, though overlapping in many ways, were no longer the right match for each other,” Haskell wrote in a memo to staff.
“While I found myself often disagreeing with his politics, I also found it valuable to be publishing work that challenged my thinking.”
Haskell then went on to say that publishing conservative commentary in the current climate is “difficult to get right” and that “thoughtful, well-meaning people can come to different conclusions about it.”
Conservative voices being eased out of newsrooms
Sullivan's departure from New York Magazine is the latest example of a columnist leaving a post for having conservative views in an increasingly liberal newsroom.
On the same day that Sullivan announced his departure, Bari Weiss announced her departure from the New York Times. In a scathing public letter to publisher A. G. Sulzberger, Weiss said that the Gray Lady's once tolerant newsroom had become toxic, with co-workers becoming increasingly intolerant of her conservative views.
Prior to Weiss's departure, The Times's then editorial page editor James Bennet had already resigned in the aftermath of the paper running an op-ed by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, which led to a staff revolt in the paper. (Related: Leftist mob bullies New York Times into limiting “offensive” op-eds.)
These, alongside Sullivan's departure, raise questions whether there is any space for different opinions in these increasingly Left-leaning mainstream news outlets.
“The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people,” wrote Weiss in her letter. “Nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back.”
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