Reflections on Columbia’s abrupt dismissal of veteran editor Sewell Chan by journalists who worked with and for him.
By Karin Klein
I spent about half of my 48 years in newspaper journalism as an assigning editor and I can say with reasonable confidence that some of my former reporters thought I was a fantastic editor while others thought I was a horror. One sent me an anonymous hate letter. Another team of reporters nominated me for a best-editor award.
Where does the truth lie? Maybe everywhere, as I strived to grow as an editor and more importantly as a person. In any case, it’s hard to find objective reality in professional and personal interactions.
So what are we as journalists to make of the sudden firing of Sewell Chan, who for a mere eight months led Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) as executive editor after previous stints at the LA Times and Texas Tribune?
Only that there might be multiple versions of the truth, a humbling lesson for all of us.
There might be multiple versions of the truth, a humbling lesson for all of us.
We have Chan’s detailed statement about difficult recent interactions with CJR’s tiny staff, on tough topics including the war in Gaza, MeToo, and return to work.
We have a blunt Breaker Media essay by Ravi Somaiya, a former CJR editor, describing a Sewell Chan who screamed rudely at people, denigrated trainees, and acted emotionally unstable.
According to Chan’s account of what happened before he was fired, he had had a couple of confrontations with staffers, such as telling one that it was a conflict of interest for him to write about a certain publication and then write for that publication. Another was “with a staffer who declined to come into the office (even though the school requires attendance four days a week) and to write at least one story a week,” Chan wrote in his defense. “With the school’s approval this employee was given several months’ paid leave to look for a new job.”
I don’t know what happened. Somaiya’s account is obviously truth to him and probably to some or all of his CJR colleagues. But I and former colleagues at the Los Angeles Times with whom I’ve been in touch, including Norman Pearlstine, do not even recognize the Chan described in that essay.
Clockwise from top left: Sewell Chan, Ravi Somaiya, Jelani Cobb, Jon Healey, Norman Pearlstine, and Karin Klein.
I and former colleagues at the Los Angeles Times …do not even recognize the Chan described in that essay.
I worked under Chan as an editorial writer at the Los Angeles Times for 18 months, when he was editorial page editor and I was an editorial writer and member of the board.
I can tell you from personal experience that Chan can be eccentric, for sure. Disorganized. A favorite editor of mine left our department because he found working for Chan so frustrating. But that did not include any rough handling of staff, anger or emotional outbursts. And he was also capable of getting great work out of his people.
For myself, Chan was a big-thinking, let’s-break-convention editor during a time that challenged all journalists – the pandemic. He encouraged us to think big, too, and try things we hadn’t before. And when his ideas weren’t of the shoot-me-down variety, they could be golden.
One was a multi-part project dreaming of a new way of doing things in the post-pandemic era – in transportation, health and so forth. Mine, on education, allowed me to break out of my usual incremental mode to write about how the pressure to obtain college degrees was unfair and counterproductive. The response to the piece was big at that time, when the pandemic had led many young people to shed their college plans, and the editorial led to a contract with HarperCollins to write a book on the topic. So that’s my personal truth.
To be sure, Chan was the kind of editor who would come up with more ideas before the morning editorial board meeting than most of us generate in a month. Unfortunately, maybe 5% of those ideas were usable. Fortunately, he had the respect for the board to listen when we explained why something was a bad idea and act accordingly. He didn’t cling to notions or biases, unlike other editors I’ve had. He was friendly, often funny, and his responses were both intellectual and heartfelt.
He also wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. (Who is? Not I.)
A favorite editor of mine left our department because he found working for Chan so frustrating.
Asked about his experiences, Jon Healey, the assistant editorials editor who switched departments, told me that Chan would be disengaged until he became engaged, which was often too late in the process. He left some of the work that he should have done himself for other, overworked departments such as page design. He never grasped the workflow for the print product, which should be a basic for the operation’s top editor, making life more difficult for those around him.
Healey said he yelled at Chan multiple times about these lapses, which is meaningful because Healey doesn’t yell at coworkers. But he was never in trouble for raising his voice. Chan may have disrespected others by not taking care of his responsibilities in a timely or efficient way – but in our experience, never in the way he interacted with them.
“The description of Sewell in the Breaker piece was unrecognizable to me,” Healey told me.
Multiply that sentiment by a bunch of Times colleagues current and former. We simply don’t know that rude, overbearing, unhinged Sewell Chan. We never met him.
Pearlstine, former executive editor of the Times, told me that Chan could use an assistant to keep him on schedule, but that he invariably was kind toward people, hard-working and completely ethical.
Chan had confided in him in a generic way about some of the things that he felt needed to change at CJR, Pearlstine said, but in no way did he express animosity toward the staff or a sense that something awful was happening or that a massive turnover of staff had to happen.
Another journalism colleague, not from the Times, visited the Texas Tribune newsroom, which Chan had left the Times to lead. That person got the impression that Chan was popular among his staff there.
Does that mean the firing was unjustified and the Breaker piece is wildly untrue? Not at all.
Does that mean the firing was unjustified and the Breaker piece is wildly untrue? Not at all. It proves only the truth that I and many colleagues have experienced. I have trouble imagining someone making up a story about a staffer made to cry – just has I have trouble imagining Chan doing such a thing. Somaiya isn’t some fly-by-night pit-bull essayist. He has his own record of achievement. (He declined to speak with me.)
Chan stepped into a difficult situation when he returned to New York. CJR had struck me as increasingly irrelevant and nearly moribund before his arrival. Soon after he started, it was producing must-read stories. Sudden, dramatic change in an organization that demands more and different of staff is generally unpopular. Chan also was taking over an operation where staff had applied for his job. Not exactly a comfy place for either side.
The question is whether Chan, in trying to transform this tiny operation into one that commanded more of the old respect from journalists, did so unfairly and abusively.
Chan is widely acknowledged as an extremely bright and erudite man. I’d like to meet the book he hasn’t read. Like many brilliant, creative people, he is quirky. Meanwhile, Columbia University is a school under extraordinary pressure from all sides right now, where any step could set off a conflagration from the right or left. “Columbia’s difficulty in appointing even an acting president suggests that it may be, at least for the moment, nearly unmanageable,” The Atlantic reported Monday. Chan wouldn’t be the first middle-aged editor to run into a buzzsaw when dealing with intense topics and feelings, and a largely younger staff.
Chan declined to comment on his CJR departure beyond referring me to his statement. But when I asked him about what Healey had said, he didn’t try to back away from the criticism. “Jon pointed out some areas where I needed to change,” he said, “and I continue to try, like all leaders, to work and grow as an effective manager.”
A longtime consulting editor for The Grade, Karin Klein resigned from her position as an editorial writer for the Los Angeles Times in October in response to the owner’s actions around endorsements for the presidential election. She is the author of “Rethinking College: A Guide to Thriving Without a Degree.”
Previously from Klein
Why I quit the LA Times – and canceled my subscription, too.
