Alexi McCammond, the 27-year-old Axios reporter who was named editor in chief of Teen Vogue two weeks ago, said on Thursday that she and Condé Nast, the magazine’s owner and editor, had agreed to part ways.
Several members of the Teen Vogue and Condé Nast team protested the hiring of McCammond based on 2011 tweets, in which she made disparaging comments about Asians and gays. McCammond publicly apologized for the tweets in 2019 and again after his appointment on Teen Vogue.
“My previous tweets obscured the work I did to highlight the people and issues that interest me – issues that Teen Vogue worked tirelessly to share with the world – so Condé Nast and I decided to split up,” she said in a statement Thursday. market.
In an email to employees, Condé Nast’s personnel director, Stan Duncan, said the company was aware of McCammond’s tweets when he hired it.
“Given his previous recognition of these posts and his sincere apologies, in addition to his remarkable work in journalism raising the voices of marginalized communities, we were looking forward to welcoming you into our community,” he wrote.
The uproar over McCammond’s tweets, which has been going on for a decade, comes amid a great national conversation about racism and violence against Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic.
At the same time, Condé Nast became involved in a series of controversies about racism in its own organization, particularly in Bon Appétit, where editor-in-chief Adam Rapaport resigned. Anna Wintour, director of content for Condé Nast and editor of Vogue, said publicly that this title did not provide enough space for the creators of Black on its pages.
The resignation also adds another twist to what has been a dramatic few months for McCammond. Earlier this year, she and her boyfriend, TJ Ducklo, then deputy press secretary of the White House, publicized their relationship in People magazine to anticipate a Politico report that drew attention to an apparent conflict of interest: that she was a political reporter who covered Joe Biden’s campaign while Ducklo was a member of Biden’s campaign and the White House communications team at the time.
Ducklo is a former employee of the communications department of NBC News and McCammond was previously a contributor to NBC and MSNBC.
Ducklo ended up resigning from the Biden White House after threatening to “destroy” the Politico reporter who had written about their relationship.
