Jill Abramson is best known for her time as the executive editor of The New York Times from September 2011 to May 2014. She was the first female executive editor in the paper's 160-year history.
Abramson was born and raised in New York City. She attended Harvard University and graduated in 1976 with a bachelor’s degree in history and literature. While in college, she was the Arts Editor of The Harvard Independent and freelanced for Time magazine.
Abramson then spent nearly a decade as a senior staff reporter for The American Lawyer before being appointed as editor-in-chief of Legal Times, where she served for two years. In 1988, she was hired as a reporter for the Washington bureau of The Wall Street Journal, where she reported on the White House and later became deputy Washington bureau chief.
Abramson joined the Washington bureau of The New York Times in 1997, where she became enterprise editor in 2000. She would find herself frequently butting heads with Howell Raines, then the paper’s executive editor, until he was fired due to a plagiarism controversy in 2003. His replacement, Bill Keller, made Abramson managing editor of the paper, and in September 2011 she succeeded Keller as executive editor.
Abramson expanded several of her articles into books, including “Where They Are Now: The Story of the Women of Harvard Law, 1974,” “Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas,” and “The Puppy Diaries: Raising a Dog Named Scout,” which is composed of columns she wrote during the first year of her life with a golden retriever. In 2019, “Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts” was released, which stirred controversy over accusations of plagiarism.
Abramson issued an apology during an interview with Rolling Stone, stating, “Of course, I’m sorry. I’m saying I’m sorry to readers and anybody who feels aggrieved. I had no intention to take anybody’s work without credit or to make any factual errors. I’ve tried to do the only thing I can, which is to be transparent about them and to correct them. Of course, I’m sorry.”
Abramson has also taught at Princeton, Yale, and Harvard.