Jill Abramson, the Harvard journalism professor who previously served as the top editor of the New York Times, blasted the paper Wednesday for failing to cover Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who staged an upset over Rep. Joe Crowley in the 14th District’s Democratic primary race.
“Kind of pisses me off that @nytimes is still asking Who Is Ocasio-Cortez? when it should have covered her campaign,” Abramson wrote Wednesday on Twitter, linking to a Times article published the same day that profiled the candidate. “Missing her rise akin to not seeing Trump’s win coming in 2016.”
Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old former campaign organizer for Bernie Sanders in 2016, shocked the political world by defeating Crowley, the incumbent who has served for almost two decades and was widely regarded as a possible heir to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., when she decides to retire.
https://t.co/9EjYhKDYs5
Kind of pisses me off that @nytimes is still asking Who Is Ocasio-Cortez? when it should have covered her campaign. Missing her rise akin to not seeing Trump’s win coming in 2016.— Jill Abramson (@JillAbramson) June 27, 2018
Even in the Times’ New York metro coverage, the race was barely covered, though the paper’s editorial board on June 19 did warn Crowley against taking the re-election for granted.
A separate editorial on Wednesday said that Ocasio-Cortez’s election demonstrated that, “The liberal base is fired up, showing up at the polls, and may be ignored only at great political risk.”
