Audrey Cooper: Now a "mean-too" bully

Photo: Mike Kepka

Audrey Cooper had an undistinguished career at the SF Chronicle, where she was a bully and an incompetent. The story about her leaving the Chronicle didn't say where she was going.

We learn from the NY Times today that she went to WNYC in New York:

....WNYC’s human resources department seems to have its hands full with complaints and counter-complaints of bullying, including those against two prominent women who joined WNYC from sharp-elbowed commercial newsrooms. On Sunday, the company’s labor union filed a formal complaint against the station’s editor in chief, Audrey Cooper, with the National Labor Relations Board, for reportedly waging a “coordinated and aggressive campaign” against her internal critics....

Apparently "sharp elbowed" is a euphemism for "bully." Like many conservatives who confuse cruelty with toughness, executives who do the hiring at some organizations confuse bullying with toughness. 

Before Cooper was hired, the staff was asked what they wanted in a new leader:

The place came apart again last summer after Ms. Sheikholeslami asked staff members what they wanted in a leader, and they asked for a person of color with roots in New York and a connection to public media. Instead, she and the station’s chief content officer, Andrew Golis, hired Ms. Cooper, the white editor of The San Francisco Chronicle. Ms. Cooper was welcomed to New York with the headline “WNYC Employees Demanded Diversity. They Got Another White Boss.”

Cooper's attempt to reassure the station's staff showed that she was both a bully and stupid:

She boasted at a large, early meeting of her record of firing white men at The Chronicle, three people who Zoomed into the virtual gathering said. That wasn’t quite what the staff had wanted, either, though, and they were “horrified” at the remark, a cultural critic at the time, Rebecca Carroll, said this week.

Cooper than fired a popular, long-time staffer based on a bogus plagiarism charge, which prompted a protest letter signed by 60 members of the station's staff.

Evidently WNYC's due diligence before hiring Cooper didn't include checking District 5 Diary. See Going to the women's march? You're fired!, The Chronicle's high-minded rhetoric, and Audrey Cooper won't be missed.