Editors fired in Newsweek upheaval
Chaos roiled the Newsweek offices Monday with the firings of the editor in chief, his deputy and at least one of the reporters who had been working on stories critical of the newsmagazine’s parent company.
Johnathan Davis, the cofounder of Newsweek Media Group, ordered the firing of top editor Bob Roe, Roe’s deputy editor Ken Li and reporter Celeste Katz, a source said.
Two other reporters — Josh Saul and Josh Keefe — saw their company email accounts disabled. Keefe ultimately kept his job. Saul’s status was unclear.
Katz, Saul and Keefe had been writing about an investigation of the company by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Their stories said it was a financial fraud investigation that started about a year and a half ago.
In addition to that investigation, Newsweek placed Chief Content Officer Dayan Candappa on leave in recent weeks after allegations that he repeatedly sexually harassed a woman while he was a top official at Reuters. The company hired a law firm to investigate Candappa’s conduct. The three reporters had written stories about that scandal as well.
Roe and Li were closely involved in editing those stories, the source said.
Keefe, a reporter for Newsweek’s sister publication the International Business Times, still has his job — but his company email was deactivated and he was scheduled to meet with a human resources representative, another source said.
“I have not been fired, although that was very clearly the plan,” Keefe said on Twitter.
A third source said Roe and Li told the Newsweek staff last week that they would protect Katz and Saul, and promised to quit if the reporters were fired. Staffers had asked Roe and Li if Katz and Saul were in danger of losing their jobs because of the coverage.
On Monday, editors told staffers not to work until the company briefs them on what happened. The staff was then sent home for the day.