Donald McNeil Jr., the veteran New York Times journalist who was forced out by paper earlier this year, revealed that his former employer did damage control with the Pulitzer Prize organization in order to salvage its chances of earning an award over its coronavirus coverage.
On Friday, the Times received the coveted journalism prize in the “public service” category for its reporting throughout the pandemic, which was largely spearheaded by McNeil before his dramatic exit from the paper in February after it was reported that he had used the N-word in context of a conversation during a 2019 educational trip to Peru.
In a statement to Fox News, McNeil said he was “very happy for my former colleagues,” but called the win “bittersweet.”
“In January, I was told that my articles and appearances on The Daily would be a prominent part of this submission. In February, in a moment of panic, The Times pressured me to resign over false accusations that I was a racist,” McNeil told Fox News. “Since they had ordered me to not respond in detail to the Daily Beast’s accusations, I was unable to explain why they were false (until after I departed on March 1.).”
However, amid the N-word controversy, the Times apparently reached out to folks at the Pulitzer Prize hoping that the negative publicity wouldn’t jeopardize its consideration for the award.
“Fearing the controversy would cost them a Pulitzer, the Times wrote to the Pulitzer jury and board to reassure them that I was not a racist. They said they had looked into the same accusations in 2019 and had found them mostly false,” McNeil wrote, stressing, “I was told this both by [Times executive editor] Dean Baquet and by [assistant managing editor] Glenn Kramon, who oversees prize submissions.”
“That tactic seems to have worked. Bravo.”