New York Times Editor to Gun-Rights Activist: ‘I Know What Kind of F***ing A**holes You Are’

Former New York Times feature writer Nellie Bowles writes in her wife Bari Weiss’s Substack today about the case of a now-ousted editor at the Paper of Record who called up various gun-rights activists to leave voicemail messages asking them if they were afraid of going to hell for their politics. Bowles says that she was very proud of the prestige she wielded as a Times writer and therefore,

I fully empathize with how this furious Times editor reminded them during her voicemails that she was with the New York Times. “Again, I am from the New York Times, and I’m letting everyone know what kind of f***ing a**holes you are,” she said in one voicemail. I don’t blame her.

Readers of the Times may have on one or two occasions noticed that the paper increasingly seems more like activism than journalism, with a notable decline in objective reporting. Bowles, like Weiss, became disillusioned with the way the Times operates and walked away from it. If either (or both) of them wrote a memoir about their experiences, I’m sure it would be even hotter than Burning Down My Master’s House, a previous score-settler from an ex-Times journo, although unlike Bowles and Weiss, Jayson Blair was fired for printing made-up stories.

Editor’s Note: This post has been updated to reflect that the details of the Times editor’s voicemails came from a news report, not from Bowles’s personal recollection.