If you work for a mainstream paper, watch your back.
Amid all the news about — and relitigation of — the New York Times’ firing of former editorial-page editor James Bennet after he published an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton, it’s worth remembering the other James Bennet: David Mastio, USA Today’s former deputy editorial-page editor, whose story I’ve already told.
In August 2021, Mastio tweeted that “people who are pregnant are also women.” Shortly thereafter, opinion editor Kristen DelGuzzi and editor in chief Nicole Carroll sent Mastio a memo informing him that as a result of his tweet, in addition to previous “lapses in judgment,” he would be demoted to “opinion writer,” with a pay cut of $30,000 a year.
Incredibly, the other instances suddenly characterized as “lapses in judgment” by Carroll and DelGuzzi had never so much as warranted a word of warning to Mastio.
In the first of the two examples cited by his two superiors, he had written that “a president [Donald Trump] who would all but call Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand a whore is not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library,” which they deemed offensive to custodial workers. In the second, he had worked on editing an op-ed from Trump opposing Medicare for all, which they said had required a follow-up column from the paper’s standards editor, who approvingly quoted Mastio in the piece and expressed the paper’s satisfaction with the op-ed.
In neither instance was he informed at the time of any error on his part.
After Mastio pointed out the numerous factual errors in their memo and procedural errors regarding his punishment, his salary was restored and he was named a “columnist.” He nevertheless left USA Today months later, telling National Review that it was “awkward working at a place where you felt like your bosses were out to get you and throw you out the door” even if they had to invent past infractions to do it.
DelGuzzi and Carroll did not respond to requests for comment when I reached out in June. In a column published by Carroll that same month, she committed the apparently demotion-worthy offense of using “woman” where she should have used “pregnant person.”