A publicity photo of Quinn Norton released on Tuesday by the New York Times. Image by New York Times

By Ari Feldman February 14, 2018

The New York Times announced a new hire on Tuesday afternoon. And then reversed the decision Tuesday night after Twitter users showed the writer’s tweets using homophobic slurs and bragging about befriending neo-Nazis, the Washington Post reported.

The Times’ editorial board announced it had hired Quinn Norton, a technology blogger, to be its lead opinion writer on “power, culture and consequences of technology.” Shortly after, Twitter erupted with screenshots of Norton’s past tweets, including one where she claims to be friends with Andrew Auernheimer, aka Weev, a white supremacist hacker who helps manage the Daily Stormer site.

NYT has done it again pic.twitter.com/iIDqu5oanP

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

— William Turton (@WilliamTurton) February 13, 2018

The Times released a statement Tuesday evening from James Bennett, the editorial page editor, saying the tweets were “new information to us.”

Norton defended her tweets about Auernheimer by saying, “I believe white folks should engage with the racists in their life.”

Norton also said that she used the gay slur because she is a “queer activist” and wanted to use “their language” when speaking with members of the LGBT community. Norton also said that her use of the word “n****r” in tweets was because she was “trying to make a point” about the election of Barack Obama.

Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount