In 2018, a reporter at The Verge was viciously mobbed by bad faith attacks in an attempt to discredit her as she moved to a prestigious job at The New York Times. While we did not say it directly at the time, we were dismayed that the Times partially yielded to the targeted harassment of an incoming reporter by accusing her of “serving to feed the vitriol” of online discourse. As then-managing editor of The Verge, I wrote an editorial note that was signed by our entire leadership team, declaring that our newsroom would not be cowed by the tactics of Gamergate and other malevolent online movements meant to intimidate journalists and their newsrooms.
We were glad to see the positive response to our note from others in the industry. But sadly, it seems our colleagues in leadership positions in other major newsrooms have not learned any of the hard-earned lessons of dealing with online abuse in the last decade, let alone those that have been amplified in the past few years of the Trump presidency.
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