Journalist Meghan Daum interviewed former New York Times opinion columnist Pamela Paul on the Friday episode of her podcast, “The Unspeakeasy,” the conversation appearing under the provocative rubric “How To Get Fired from the New York Times.”
Paul became a New York Times opinion columnist after nearly a decade running the paper’s Book Review. She was fired by Opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury in January 2025 and now writes for The Wall Street Journal.
While her opinion pieces trended liberal, she voiced skepticism on issues like cancel culture, cultural appropriation, and especially transgenderism. Such iconoclasm made her a reviled figure on the left and in the Times newsroom (but I repeat myself).
The fate of former Times opinion editor James Bennet may have affected how badly Paul was treated by Kingsbury. Bennet was forced out by the paper’s internal left-wing “child mob” for platforming a piece by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas who argued federal forces should be sent to (deja vu) Minneapolis during the George Floyd riots of 2020.
Pamela Paul: The crime that James had committed was not writing the column or the op-ed. It was platforming it. And so, if I was writing things that were upsetting the, you know, the, the Little Red Guards or whatever, then that person in charge of the section would be guilty of platforming me....
Paul also got into the under-covered issue of online reader comments and what makes conservative posts mysteriously disappear: The paper's leftist comment editors would do the bidding of leftist readers, who would accuse other commenters of being offensive or using the wrong pronouns, and the editors would dutifully delete those "offensive" comments – a practice that will sound familiar to conservatives.
She explained that her columns on gender issues received “overwhelmingly positive response” from readers but not from “magazines and newspapers that I felt like once would never have bothered to write stories that were essentially regurgitations and summations of a few angry tweets from activists and sort of invested parties.” The New Republic even called her a fascist.
Her February 2023 column defending author J.K. Rowling from vicious attacks by trans activists was the beginning of the end for Paul at the paper.
She was caught off guard in January 2025 when the news of her firing leaked (her last NYT column appeared in April 2025). She pointed the finger at a cowardly Kingsbury and an unnamed New York Magazine writer, apparently media reporter Charlotte Klein:
Paul: And she had also taken the time to give a quote to the reporter at New York Magazine who had leaked it. I'm going to actually need to use the word reporter in quotes here because I don't think she is actually deserves that, that job title. I think she thinks of herself as a reporter. But she had, Katie had given her a quote saying, I would, we would never push anyone out for political, solely for political reasons. Which is a pretty telling quote. Part of it, I think, probably inartful and unintentional, and part of it probably a wink to, you know, hey, I'm on the side of you activists. I'm getting rid of her for the reasons you want me to.
Paul claimed the most frightening thing about journalism today is “not that there are factual inaccuracies in a lot of reporting. It's just, there's a lot left out and it's really hard to prove a negative. And so people feel like they're not getting the full story, but they can't quite pinpoint it….”
That’s what we at NewsBusters call “bias by omission.”
