Voting Station

James Bennet

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Publisher

The Resume

    (March 28, 1966- )
    Born in Boston, Massachusetts
    Middle name is Douglas
    Editorials page editor at The New York Times from May 2016 to June 2020 (Resigned)
    Editor in Chief at The Atlantic magazine (March 2006 to March 2016)
    Brother of Colorado Senator Michael Bennet

Why he might be annoying:

    He has confessed to not reading the articles he approves on multiple occasions.
    He came under fire in April 2008 after he made the decision to have the Atlantic feature a cover story on Britney Spears. The issue did poorly in newsstand sales.
    His first act as New York Times editor was to hire op-ed columnist Bret Stephens, whose maiden column cast doubt on the long term consequences of climate change, resulting in a barrage of criticism and subscription cancellations.
    He further alienated himself from his readership after he signed off on an editorial responding to allegations of political incitement in the 2017 Congressional baseball shooting.
    The piece, which falsely linked Sarah Palin and her political action committee to the 2011 mass shooting in Arizona that wounded then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, drew a backlash prompting a public retraction. The article's charge of incitement would also prompt Palin to sue the Times for defamation later the same month.
    He allowed Senator Tom Cotton to pen an op-ed for the Times ('Send in the Troops') calling for the deployment of feds to respond to Black Lives Matter riots in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.
    The backlash to the op-ed extended to Times staffers publicly criticizing him for 'normalizing dangerous rhetoric.' He resigned four days later.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He joined The New York Times in 1991 and rose to serve as a White House correspondent and Jerusalem Bureau Chief.
    He wrote a memorandum on the proper usage of the terms 'terrorist' and 'terrorism,' which is often cited by editors of The Times.
    He was selected by Atlantic publisher David Bradley after conferring with 80 journalists around the United States.
    During his tenure, The Atlantic dramatically increased web traffic, and within four years the magazine saw its first profitable year in over a decade.
    When his brother ran for President, he agreed to recuse himself from all coverage of the 2020 presidential primary race.
    He was in the running for the Editor-in-Chief job at the Times and was seen as a leading contender before a series of badly timed missteps.

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 3 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 9 Votes: 77.78% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 17 Votes: 100% Annoying