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| Jill Abramson |
Like most journalism
junkies, I’ve devoured pretty much every scrap of news and gossip I could get
my hands on regarding Jill Abramson’s firing as executive editor of the New York Times. For a longtime reporter
and a longtime lover of the Times,
it’s been palace intrigue at its bloodiest, and therefore most riveting.
It so happened that
even as the Times fiasco unfolded,
I’d been in the midst of studying a subject that’s fascinated me of late:
“emotional labor.” The sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild coined the term,
and her 1983 book, The Managed Heart:
Commercialization of Human Feeling helped spur a raft of research
concerning the influence of feelings in the workplace. Seeing the events of the
past week through the prism of that research has been enlightening.
The term “emotional
labor” refers to the effort it takes for employees in certain situations not to
respond to the emotions their jobs cause them to feel, or to respond
“appropriately,” i.e., in ways that won’t damage the bottom line of the
businesses they work for. The field focuses largely on workers who interact
with the public—airline stewardesses and customer service representatives, for
example—but there’s also a fair amount of attention paid to internal
relationships between employees and bosses. In both cases the hypothesis is
that emotional labor is a form of stress that can be detrimental to workers’
health.
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| The customer is always right |
Emotional labor has
been defined as "the effort, planning, and control needed to express
organizationally-desired emotion during interpersonal transactions." This
controlled emotional expression is a form of acting that is said to fall into
one of two basic categories: Surface acting, wherein the outer expressions of
inner feelings are controlled, and deep acting, wherein the person seeks to
actually modify emotions that arise.
The need to manage
emotional expectations and reactions, and the consequences of failing to manage
them, played a crucial role in Jill Abramson’s downfall. I’ll review here the
most important reasons why that is so. My sources are two expansive articles on
emotion work, one by Hochschild in the American
Journal of Sociology, the other by Alicia Grandey in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology.*
It’s important, first
of all, to note the emotional context in which the reactions of the key figures
in the Times drama played out. At
least three distinct pairs of identity agendas were involved:
- Feminist management values vs. traditional (largely male) management values
- Shoe-leather journalism values vs. (inherited) management journalism values
- Old school, traditional print journalism values vs. new school digital journalism values
It’s less clear in the reporting of the Abramson imbroglio how
a fourth pair of social values fit into the mix, but it has to be assumed that
in some way they did. I refer to the black versus white values associated with
the fact that one of the central figures, managing editor Dean
Baquet, is black. Given the volatile sensitivities surrounding anything
having to do with race, whatever part Baquet’s color played—specifically,
how his color might have affected Baquet’s own emotional makeup and consequent
reactions and behaviors—has been, from what I’ve seen, avoided, as it probably
should have been. Nonetheless it would be naïve to believe race played no role
whatsoever.
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| Dean Baquet |
Despite that
omission, no shortage of information has emerged describing the basic events
that transpired, much of it demonstrating that various manifestations of
emotional management and mismanagement had everything to do with the entire
unfortunate episode.
In social situations
we all react according to what Hochschild calls “a latent set of rules”
dictated by the values of the groups to which we belong or would like to
belong. These rules define what “conventions of feeling” are deemed appropriate
in given situations, and these in turn define what types of emotional display
are expected and “owed.”
These emotional
displays are often contrived, and deceptive. “Emotional labor may involve
enhancing, faking, or suppressing emotions to modify the emotional expression,”
Grandey says. For airline stewardesses and customer service representatives,
“display rules” adhere to the principle that the customer is always right. Expectations within organizations can be more ambiguous, leading more easily to
misinterpretation, offense and eventual conflict. This is especially true when
the behaviors stem from different sets of values in which different “feeling
rules” apply. As Hochschild puts it, “Feeling rules differ curiously from other
types of rules in that they do not apply to action but to what is often taken
as a precursor to action. Therefore they tend to be latent and resistant to
formal codification.”
Figuring out the
feeling rules becomes infinitely more confusing during periods of dramatic
social and professional change. Explains Hochschild, “Part of what we refer to
as the psychological effects of ‘rapid social change,’ or ‘unrest’ is a change
in the relation of feeling rule to feeling and a lack of clarity about what the
rule actually is, owing to conflicts and contradictions between contending sets
of rules. Feelings and frames are deconventionalized, but not yet
reconventionalized.”
Like other rules,
Hochschild adds, feeling rules can be halfheartedly obeyed or boldly broken.
The penalty one risks for either action varies, but termination is among the
possibilities.
Jill Abramson’s role
as the Times’ first female executive
editor was a classic example of deconventionalized feelings and frames. The
frantic pressure to adjust to the demands of the digital revolution poured more
complexity into the emotional mix. “As some ideologies gain acceptance and
others dwindle,” Hochschild says, “contending sets of feeling rules rise and
fall.”
Whether we’re
interacting with an irate customer or a demanding boss, we’ve all felt it
necessary in work situations to act differently than we feel, or, put another
way, not to act the way we feel. It’s considered a mark of maturity as well as
employability to “manage” our emotions. The movie Office Space portrays, in the waitress character played by Jennifer
Aniston, an employee who struggles with this problem. Repeatedly reprimanded by
her boss for failing to display enough enthusiasm for her work—enthusiasm
symbolized by the number of pieces of “flair” she’s willing to put on her
uniform—she finally quits. This is an outcome frequently predicted and observed
by emotional labor researchers.
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| Office Space |
Absurd as it may
sound, Abramson’s troubles at the Times
bear some resemblance to the troubles of Anniston’s character in Office Space. Certainly Abramson failed
to fulfill the emotional expectations of her boss, Arthur Sulzberger Jr.. Like
Aniston’s character, she basically lost her job because she was unwilling to
engage in the types of emotional display required of team players. Whose fault
that was obviously depends on who you talk to. Either Abramson was a bad
manager, a bitch, or both, or she was inaccurately labeled as such, mainly
because she was a woman who refused to conform to sexist stereotypes.
Regardless of which is true, or more true, expectations based on conventions of
feeling paved the way for Abramson’s departure.
Abramson is clearly a
dedicated feminist who takes her values, her integrity and her journalism very seriously, as the tattoo of the Times "T” logo on her back suggests. The idea of offering, in her role as executive editor, the sorts of emotional reassurances
and comforts that women have traditionally been expected to provide would probably
have struck her as emotionally dishonest. She didn’t get where she was by
playing the nice girl and I suspect she had no interest in adopting that role
once she’d risen to the top. To do so would have been a betrayal of her basic
values. It was a different story when it came to supporting other women in the
newsroom, which by all accounts Abramson did openly and enthusiastically.
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| The Times logo |
Writes Hochschild,
“Rules for managing feeling are implicit in any ideological stance; they are
the ‘bottom side’ of ideology.” Refusing to conform to the feeling rules
defined for a certain role suggests “an ideology lapsed or rejected.”
Abramson’s
professional history as a hard-hitting investigative reporter provided another
set of values that would have made her reluctant to play nice with Sulzberger
and his new CEO, Mark Thompson. Janet Malcom famously pointed out that
reporters routinely hide their true feelings when they’re trying to win the
confidence of their sources. In most other situations, however, they like to
think of themselves as truth tellers. (I say this as someone who worked for
more than a decade as an investigative reporter.) Honesty rates much higher on
the value scale than making things look good. That’s why Abramson refused to go
along with Sulzberger’s offer to construct a face-saving explanation of her
departure for public consumption. Fuck that, I’m sure she said, to herself if
not directly to Sulzberger. I’m not going to lie just to make this easier for
you.
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| Arthur Sulzberger Jr. |
(Ron Howard’s 1994
movie The Paper offers a fine
portrait of the dynamic I’m talking about here, with Michael Keaton playing the
Abramson role and Spalding Gray playing the Sulzberger role.)
What of Dean Baquet’s
role in the affair? For whatever reasons he seems constitutionally to be more
attentive to feeling rules than Abramson. He hadn’t been told, for example,
that Abramson planned to hire the Guardian’s
Janine Gibson to be Baquet’s co-managing editor. Baquet kept his feelings to
himself when he learned of this over lunch with Gibson, but he reportedly
expressed his dismay in no uncertain terms during a dinner with Sulzberger two
days later, apparently suggesting or stating outright that he would resign
rather than continue working with Abramson.
In the wake of an
earlier disagreement, Baquet had walked out of Abramson’s office and slammed
his fist into a wall—an uncharacteristic loss of emotional control for which he
subsequently apologized, publicly. "The newsroom doesn't need to see one
of its leaders have a tantrum,” he told Politico.
While managing editor of the Los Angeles
Times during a period when management was imposing repeated rounds of editorial cutbacks, Baquet eventually decided he'd had enough and dramatically resigned. Some who worked there at the time,
however, have noted that up to that point Banquet had handled the bloodletting with notable composure. “He was a grownup about it,” one colleague
told the Washington Post. “He was not
the kind to go pout.”
These characteristics
suggest that Baquet fits Alicia Grandey’s description of a “high
self-monitoring” individual, while Abramson may be the opposite. “High
self-monitors,” Grandey writes, “are more aware of the emotional cues of others
and are more willing and able to change their own emotional expression to fit
the situation than low self-monitors. Low self-monitors tend to remain ‘true’
to their internal feelings.”
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| Photo posted on Instagram by Abramson's daughter, post-firing |
It isn’t likely,
then, that Baquet, a lover of fine clothes, fine art, fine cars and fine
cigars, will demonstrate his loyalty to the
Times by having its logo tattooed on his back. Nor is a picture of him
wearing a t-shirt and boxing gloves likely to appear on Instagram. There
doesn’t seem to be any question that the emotional content of Baquet’s
management style will contrast sharply with Abramson’s. He’s known as a
cheerleader, one who can be counted on to actively and generously offer feeling
support. As Dylan Byers of Politico put it, “He cares about newsroom morale and he cares about being
liked.”
I mentioned above
that we typically feel we have a “right” to expect certain types of emotional
response from those we encounter, depending on how we perceive ourselves in relation
to them, just as we feel we “owe” certain types of emotional response to
others. Sulzberger, in one of his post-firing statements, complained that
Abramson didn’t offer the sorts of feeling displays that he and others on the Times masthead deserved. "During
her tenure,” he said, “I heard repeatedly from her newsroom colleagues, women
and men, about a series of issues, including arbitrary decision-making, a
failure to consult and bring colleagues with her, inadequate communication and
the public mistreatment of colleagues."
Again, whether
Sulzberger’s version is the correct version depends on who you talk to. For
him, an appropriate manifestation of feeling display presumably would have
included a healthy measure of deference. Failing to adequately satisfy that
expectation may have been one of Abramson’s mistakes, but it’s hard to know
that for sure. Aside from her suspicions that she hadn’t been receiving pay
commensurate with that of her male predecessors, the day-to-day quality of
Abramson’s working relationship with Sulzberger is another point that hasn’t
received much attention in the press. It’s clear in any case that a more
emotionally acceptable candidate for the job—Dean Banquet—was waiting in the
wings.
No doubt the
sympathies among those remaining at the Times
are divided, and no doubt the trauma of the affair has left a trove of
unsettled emotions that will take time to sort out. As Grandey puts it, “An
emotional event may lead to more emotional regulation when that event results
in emotions that are discrepant from the organizational display rules."
In other words, for the time being you can expect that a lot of folks at the Times will be keeping their heads down.
In other words, for the time being you can expect that a lot of folks at the Times will be keeping their heads down.
*Hochschild, “Emotion
Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure.” American
Journal of Sociology, Vol. 85, No. 3 (Nov., 1979), p. 551-575; Grandey,
“Emotion Regulation in the Workplace: A New Way to Conceptualize Emotional
Labor.” Journal of Occupational Health
Psychology, Vol. 5., No. 1 (2000), p. 95-110.
©Doug Hill, 2014
