ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an Advertising Agency Case in which Jill Abramson was appointed Executive Editor at The New York Times (NYT) in September of 2011, the first female to lead the newspaper. She would be fired from that position within 3 years. Broadly, the communication challenge she faced pertains to Levels 3–5 in the Level 5 Hierarchy. More specifically, based on information available, her gruff style never allowed her to get much support among her team members; she seemed to lack team leadership skills, contributing to an inability to motivate others effectively and with humility. Educated at Harvard, she worked initially at an advertising agency. She became more actively involved in journalism in the 1980s, working as a researcher for NBC News. Working for a period at the Wall Street Journal; then, she was hired at NYT in 1997 and appointed chief of the Washington Bureau in 2000.
