FIRED EDITOR SUES NY POST

Editoonist Sean Delonas is still working at Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, but Sandra Guzman, an associate editor who protested Delonas’ controversial chimpanzee cartoon last spring, was fired at the end of September, and many on the Post staff, according to the HuffingtonPost, believe she was terminated because she openly criticized the paper for publishing the cartoon. Officially, the Post said only that “Sandra is no longer with the Post because the monthly in-paper insert, Tempo, of which she was the editor, has been discontinued." The HuffintonPost went on: “Guzman was the most high-profile Post employee to publicly speak out against the cartoon that compared the author of the stimulus bill (whom nearly everyone associated with President Obama) with a rabid primate. ‘I neither commissioned or approved it,’ Guzman wrote to a list of journalist colleagues shortly thereafter. ‘I saw it in the paper yesterday with the rest of the world. And, I have raised my objections to management.’”

Ever since then, some Post employees believe, Guzman has been on the management’s short list of people who aren’t essential to the well-being of the newspaper. “They’ve been looking for any excuse to get rid of her,” one employee told the HP on the understandable condition that he/she not be named.

Ironically, Guzman’s firing exacerbates the dilemma the Post was forced to confront in the firestorm of protest from African American organizations that, in the wake of Delonas’ stumbling cartoon message, accused the Post of a lack of diversity in its staffing: until she was fired, Guzman was the only woman of color on the paper’s executive staff. The HP quotes another “longtime Post employee” (again, anonymously) who said there has been only one African-American editor at the paper in the last decade. "The hiring practices are really bad and have been for most of the time I've been here," said the employee. "Since I've been here there have been as many black editors as there have been black presidents of the United States."

The irony of Guzman’s firing is heightened because it comes “shortly after Murdoch is said to have held a meeting of leaders from a variety of ethnic communities to discuss ways to make his various companies — including the Post — more diverse. Guzman did not return a request for comment.”

On November 9, Guzman filed a lawsuit against the paper, alleging that she was fired over the cartoon incident. She had worked at the newspaper as associate editor since July 2003, repeatedly receiving glowing performance evaluations. The suit alleges that Guzman was subjected to a hostile work environment in which, google.com reports, women and minority employees continually encountered sexist and racist comments. According to the lawsuit, Guzman's fate at the newspaper was set when she tearfully told a Post human resources executive that the newspaper should apologize to the public and its employees for the cartoon.

In a statement, the Post said: "This lawsuit has no merit and is based on charges that are groundless."