Day the shamed Teen Vogue editor who quit in race row dressed as a Native American
SMILING for the camera in a Native American fancy dress outfit, this is the journalist who was forced to quit as editor of Teen Vogue in a race row.
Yesterday it was claimed that Vogue editor Dame Anna Wintour desperately tried to save her protege Alexi McCammond even as staff led a revolt over her racist and homophobic tweets.
The Vogue editor-in-chief spent two weeks trying to ‘build support’ for the journalist as scandal swirled, insiders said.
As complaints mounted, Miss McCammond was given the chance to meet with staff to ‘apologise and listen to their concerns,’ The New York Times reported.
Her string of anti-Asian tweets from 2011 were known about in the upper echelons of Vogue but they were blindsided by a homophobic message and the photograph.
Insiders said they had not known about the controversial picture from a Halloween party in 2011 because it had been deleted from her Twitter feed. But American Rightwing website The National Pulse found and published it this week.
The 27-year-old quit as editor of the online magazine on Thursday before her first proper day in the job after the row became public.
Prior to that, publisher Conde Nast reportedly tried to stop affronted Teen Vogue staff from speaking out and told them to keep criticism ‘in the family’.
The old tweets resurfaced after Miss McCammond was named as the new editor of Teen Vogue on March 5. In one tweet from 2011, when she was 17, she wrote how she was ‘Googling how to not wake up with swollen Asian eyes’.
In another from the same year, she blamed a ‘stupid Asian’ teaching assistant for her failures during chemistry lessons.
Other tweets used the terms ‘Asian’, ‘homo’ and ‘gay’ in a derogatory ways.
Even amid a revolt from staff on the magazine, Dame Anna had stood by Miss McCammond, it was reported. The editor-in-chief, 71, had tried to turn the tide for the former Washington political reporter because she thought she was an ‘impressive’ candidate, it was claimed.
There are also questions about the vetting process before Miss McCammond was given the job.
The row has caused huge embarrassment for Conde Nast and Dame Anna, who is still reeling from claims by her own staff that Vogue has discriminated against minority groups on its pages and in the office.
And last week, Vogue US made an extraordinary claim that the Daily Mail was racist after a headline regarding the engagement of Prince Harry and Meghan spoke of ‘niggling’ worries.
Despite a complaint from this paper regarding the ‘extremely serious and unfounded allegation’, Dame Anna’s team have refused to correct it. Prior to quitting, Miss McCammond had been given oneon-one access to individual staff members and said in a note to Teen Vogue colleagues that the tweets were ‘offensive and idiotic’.
She had previously issued a public apology in 2019 and it was thought she had learned from her mistakes, Conde Nast HR boss Stan Duncan said in a memo to staff. The Daily Beast reported that the reaction from Teen Vogue staff was ‘mixed’ and some thought Miss McCammond was remorseful while others did not think she should get the job.
Staff were told to keep criticism ‘in the family’, running any plans to speak through the company communications department. As well as publishing the controversial photo, The National Pulse wrote: ‘This is what the Left calls “cultural appropriation” and they frequently attempt to “cancel” people for the “crime”.
‘The National Pulse abhors cancel culture and the constant churn of “gotcha” stories involving people’s lives. But we love pointing out the hypocrisy of the Left more. Hence this article.’
Conde Nast refused to comment on the new allegations last night.
But a Vogue insider said: ‘We hoped it would work out and that’s why we had so many meetings over the last two weeks to discuss internally.’