Death threat on the NY Times biz news desk

Lachland Cartwright of Breaker reports on an argument between New York Times business editor Ellen Pollock and one of her reporters.

Cartwright reports, “On April 22, under the headline ‘As Harvard Is Hailed a Hero, Some Donors Still Want It to Strike a Deal’ journalists Rob Copeland, Maureen Farrell and Michael S. Schmidt reported on which of the school’s well-known donors wanted to fight with the Trump administration over its draconian demands, and which did not.

“The story was high stakes and high pressure. It contained a raft of big names including Jared Kushner, John Paulson, Bill Ackman, Len Blavatnik, Larry Summers, Joe Bae, Ken Frazier, Ken Chenault, Lloyd Blankfein, Ken Griffin, Condoleezza Rice and Theodore V. Wells Jr.

“But we’ve learned that behind the scenes two key players did not cope well with the deadline pressure. According to two people familiar with the matter, Copeland and the New York Times business editor Ellen Pollock had an epic blow-up before the Harvard story ran. It resulted in a HR complaint about a “death threat.”

Read more here. A subscription is required. The New York Post has also posted this story.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.