Taylor Lorenz’s Only Sin Was Being Assertive

A sorry fate may yet await Lorenz as institutions have plenty to gain from defanging their most-outspoken.

Taylor Lorenz’s Twitter profile as of May 20, 2021. Her tweets are currently protected, not an unusual sight for a reporter frequently targeted by harassment.

There aren’t many journalists in the industry quite revered and reviled at the same time as the New York Times’ Taylor Lorenz–she’s a target of ridicule by business community members who have a strong case of unwarranted techno-optimism, but the surrounding media ecosystem holds her in high regard since she broke coverage of the influencer economy out of its infantilizing tone, a holdover from misconceptions perpetuated by the media’s old guard who don’t see the influencer space — despite its hefty commercial presence — as anything truly worthy of consideration.

That much bears out in new reporting that suggests Lorenz’s relationship with the paper is becoming tentative at best. Following the sudden departure of the Styles section editor Choire Sicha from the paper, the Daily Beast’s Maxwell Tani revealed dissatisfaction from executives on how Lorenz and other high-profile reporters of the section were handled, seemingly with little involvement from Sicha in their portrayal of the paper’s public image on the pages of social media. The report paints the picture of a Lorenz perceived by NYT management as a dog that needs to be kept on a leash, further accentuated by an…