Jeffrey Goldberg: Fury as Atlantic magazine editor suggests only white men can write long stories

‘I’m sorry I didn’t make myself clear in this interview, and I’m sorry that I hurt anyone’

Mr Goldberg apologised for his lack of clarity (Getty)

The editor of The Atlantic magazine has come under fire after appearing to suggest that only white men can write long cover stories – in comments made during an interview about the lack of women’s representation in journalism.

Jeffrey Goldberg has since attempted to clarify his comments on Twitter.

“We continue to have a problem with the print magazine cover stories – with the gender and race issues when it comes to cover story writing,” he said in an interview with Nieman Lab focused on the magazine’s efforts to increase the number of women in senior editorial positions.

“It’s really, really hard to write a 10,000-word cover story. There are not a lot of journalists in America who can do it.

“The journalists in America who do it are almost exclusively white males.”

Mr Goldberg’s comments caused fury online, with writer Lisa Goldman tweeting: “If Jeffrey Goldberg thinks there’s a lack of women who can write 10k word features, then he’s astonishingly ignorant about his peers & he should step aside for a woman to replace him. Immediately.

"I’m gobsmacked by this interview. Stunned. What an insult.”

Journalist Erik Hinton said: “It’s really, really hard to suck as bad at your job as Jeffrey Goldberg and the journalists in America who do it are almost exclusively white males.”

"Goldberg doesn't seem to know that people other than white men write longform?" tweeted feminist writer Jessica Valenti.

"It is a big deal if the [editor] of a national magazine doesn't have a broad enough reading habit to know that lots of women & people of color write longform cover stories."

Figures from outside the media industry also reacted angrily to the Nieman interview.

"In 2019, words matter. They reflect the implicit and explicit biases we harbor," said Kristen Clarke, director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonprofit organisation.

"They show the stereotypes and prejudgments that people make. They show who we entrust with responsibility and who we don’t."

"The Atlantic must do better."

In response to the backlash, Mr Goldberg said he was "trying to explain (and obviously failed to explain) that white males dominate cover-story writing because they’ve had all the opportunities”.

He continued: “We’re trying to change that at [The Atlantic].

“I’m sorry I didn’t make myself clear in this interview, and I’m sorry that I hurt anyone."

Adrienne LaFrance, the magazine’s executive editor, was also interviewed for the piece.

Laura Hazard Owen, the reporter who interviewed Mr Goldberg, said: "I believe he spoke to me in good faith and they are doing good work in diversifying the staff there. I didn’t write this piece as a hit piece or a take down."

Mr Goldberg has previously worked for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and The Washington Post.

He is no stranger to media scandal, having hired Kevin Williamson, a right-wing columnist to write for The Atlantic in March 2018.

Mr Williamson was fired less than a month later, after it emerged that he had said abortion should be treated as homicide and that death by hanging could be a suitable punishment for having a termination.

He is also known for having compared a black child to a primate in an article, according to Vox.

“I want to create conditions in which women and people of colour don’t feel like they have to represent all the time, they can just do their jobs,” Mr Goldberg said in the Nieman Lab interview.

“Nobody comes here to be the advocate for gender parity, the advocate for the inclusion of people of colour. They come here to do journalism.

“We have to not just promote a few stars, but distribute this widely so that burden-sharing becomes tolerable within an organisation.”