Teen Vogue editor resigns after fury over racist anti-Asian tweets

Alexi McCammond, who made her name as a politics reporter at the Washington news site Axios, had planned to start as the editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue March 24. Now, after Teen Vogue staff members publicly condemned racist and homophobic tweets McCammond had posted a decade ago, she has resigned from the job.

Condé Nast, Teen Vogue’s publisher, announced the abrupt turn today in an internal email that was sent amid pressure from the publication’s staff, readers and at least two advertisers, just two weeks after the company had appointed her to the position.

“After speaking with Alexi this morning, we agreed that it was best to part ways, so as to not overshadow the important work happening at Teen Vogue,” Stan Duncan, the chief people officer at Condé Nast, said in the email, which was obtained by The New York Times.

In a statement included in the email, McCammond said her “past tweets have overshadowed the work I’ve done to highlight the people and issues that I care about.”

“I wish the talented team at Teen Vogue the absolute best moving forward,” she said.

McCammond, 27, established herself as a prominent political reporter last year. She covered President Joe Biden’s campaign for Axios and was a contributor to MSNBC and NBC. In 2019, she was named the emerging journalist of the year by the National Association of Black Journalists.

Her job status became shaky days after Condé Nast named her to the position, when the offensive tweets she had posted as a teenager in 2011 resurfaced. They included comments on the appearance of Asian features, derogatory stereotypes about Asians and slurs for gay people. McCammond had apologized for the tweets in 2019 and deleted them. Screenshots of the tweets were recirculated on social media after her hiring at Teen Vogue was announced on March 5.

Within days, more than 20 staff members at Teen Vogue posted a note on social media saying they had made a complaint to company leaders about the tweets, and McCammond apologized for them again both publicly and in meetings with Condé Nast staff.

McCammond had been vetted before Condé Nast hired her, and top executives including Anna Wintour, the chief content officer and the global editorial director of Vogue, were aware of the decade-old racist tweets, Duncan said in his note today.