Taylor Lorenz, a reporter for billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post, was ridiculed for "glass superdome" syndrome Tuesday when she dismissed Bari Weiss' success as the result of coming from wealth, ignoring journalism ethics and catering to people in power.
Lorenz, who like Weiss previously worked for the New York Times, responded to an article about her former Gray Lady colleague starting her new media venture The Free Press by tweeting, "Notable what gets framed as a ‘buzzy media startup.’ If u start off rich, have a rich spouse, rich friends, don’t follow any journalistic ethical rules, and focus your content solely on serving the interests of extremely powerful rich ppl, you can go far!"
Critics quickly accused Lorenz, an outspoken left-wing voice and native of affluent Old Greenwich, Connecticut, of "projecting," and pointed out that she comes from a privileged, wealthy family and has been accused of violating journalism ethics on several high-profile occasions. Lorenz has been accused of doxxing, contacting minors for comment without parental permission and misleading readers about whether she asked the subject of a report for comment, among other controversies.
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New York Post reporter Jon Levine, a frequent critic of Lorenz, took notice.
"Taylor comes from a massively wealthy family in Connecticut and attended a 90k/year Swiss boarding school. She currently works for Jeff Bezos and her work routinely flouts journalistic standards and ethics," Levine wrote. "This isn’t a glass house — this is a glass superdome."
"While Taylor Lorenz complains about journalistic ethics, let us remember the time George Conway had to go on Twitter to publicly tell her to stop contacting his 15-year-old daughter for dirt on her mom," podcaster Noam Blum wrote.
"Taylor Lorenz lecturing anyone about being rich and without ethics is like OJ Simpson giving marriage seminars," writer Bethany Mandel reacted to another user who wrote, "Taylor Lorenz lecturing others about journalism ethics is like Casey Anthony lecturing others about parenting."
Another user called Lorenz’s tweet "objectively hilarious," and one critic responded, "Miss, your house is glass."
Another critic responded, "I'm confused, it sounds like you are describing yourself, but the context clues make it sound like you mean it about someone else."
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In 2020, Weiss famously quit the Times with a scathing resignation letter that attacked the "illiberal environment" inside the paper where she didn’t feel comfortable expressing centrist views, and said left-leaning Twitter effectively served as the paper’s "ultimate editor." Weiss, who launched The Free Press out of her successful Substack called Common Sense, noted her own "forays into Wrongthink" made her the subject of "constant bullying by colleagues" who disagreed with her views. Weiss didn’t specifically name Lorenz in the scornful letter – the two overlapped at the paper in 2019 and 2020 – but she has been critical of her in the past.
Lorenz has since moved from the Times to the Post, and recently made headlines for attacking a colleague as "absurd" over a tweet suggesting people shouldn't be afraid to leave their homes over COVID concerns.
In 2020, she repeatedly publicized a 15-year-old's TikTok posts and allegedly reached out directly to the minor without her parents' permission. In 2021, Lorenz falsely accused business tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen of "using the r-slur," which she later admitted was an error.
In April, she doxxed the identity of popular right-wing Twitter personality Libs of TikTok, just days after she decried the online harassment of women during an interview on cable television.
She was also forced to walk back a claim she was being "relentlessly" harassed by a so-called "Drudge Report editor," later claiming it was a "joke."
Many others mocked Lorenz for her latest viral hot take:
Fox News’ Nikolas Lanum and Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
