Gawker Editor Responds to ‘Gawker’s Problem With Women’ Piece

“I promise that I will do everything in my power to make sure that Gawker is an equitable and fair workplace,” Alex Pareene says about former female writer’s piece

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HuffPost Live

New Gawker editor-in-chief Alex Pareene responded to a piece by a former female writer that took on the renegade site for mistreatment of women staffers.

In “On Gawker’s Problem With Women,” Danya Evans accused Gawker of creating a workplace that promotes gender inequality by paying women less than men, assigning men the best assignments and being ignored by management.

She points fingers at Gawker Founder Nick Denton in particular, suggesting he would sooner name the late New York Times columnist David Carr editor of the website before a living woman staffer.

“Denton was posturing for New York Times readers, but the message unwittingly sent to the female writers and editors of Gawker was that their boss would sooner name a dead man than any living woman for the position,” Evans wrote.

She continued that, “This notion was then further confirmed in Denton’s treatment (or rather, maltreatment) of Gawker.com’s former features editor, Leah Finnegan, a woman whom many in the company assumed was in line for the editor-in-chief job herself – that is, if she happened to be a man named John.”

Overall, Evans said that Gawker women are taught that “they can either be rabble-rousers for a short time, or reliable composed workers to guarantee some modicum of job security.”

Pareene, who was recently named editor-in-chief, responded by saying he fought for the piece to be published on Gawker.com, but was overruled by Gawker Media executive editor John Cook.

He promised to make gender equality one of his main priorities as the site’s new editor-in-chief.

“I promise that I will do everything in my power to make sure that Gawker is an equitable and fair workplace.”

He concluded that Gawker has always been an “incubator” for “unique, brilliant, one-of-a-kind female voices” and it’s his job–along with Denton’s–to make sure it stays that way.

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