For the past year, the investigative journalist Julia Angwin has been busy building The Markup, a nonprofit news site dedicated to scrutinizing technology and its effects on society.
The Markup raised more than $23 million in funding, a testament to the reputation that Ms. Angwin, the site’s editor in chief, and another of its founders, Jeff Larson, had established through their work at ProPublica, which they left last year. But on Monday evening, Ms. Angwin was fired from The Markup via email, just months before the site’s planned July start date.
Ms. Angwin said in a letter to Craig Newmark, the Craigslist founder and the site’s biggest donor, that she was being pushed out by Sue Gardner, The Markup’s third co-founder who is also its executive director and the previous head of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Ms. Gardner wanted to change the site’s mission to “one based on advocacy against the tech companies” instead of “producing meaningful data-centered journalism about the impact of technology on society,” Ms. Angwin wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times.
Ms. Gardner disputed that characterization.
“There is no change in the mission or purpose of The Markup,” she said in response to questions from The Times. “We are, pure and simple, a news outlet, we always have been and always will be. Our goals and purpose haven’t changed.”
She added, “We are not going to talk about the circumstances of Julia Angwin leaving The Markup, because as a matter of standard practice we don’t talk about personnel or HR issues.”
Mr. Larson, who will succeed Ms. Angwin as editor in chief, said in an email that “The Markup attempted to meet with Ms. Angwin in person, and discussions about her role had been ongoing for some time. This was not abrupt.”
Ms. Angwin’s departure is a surprise for people inside and outside the roughly 15-person organization. Her credentials and vision for the site helped attract interest from journalists, other media outlets and donors, including a $20 million gift from Mr. Newmark.
“I’m devastated to be forced out of the organization I conceived to pursue rigorous, evidence-based tech accountability journalism,” Ms. Angwin said in an emailed statement. “I will continue to pursue that mission and hope to find other ways to help build this field.”
While Ms. Angwin was at ProPublica, the site became known as “big tech’s scariest watchdog.” Before joining ProPublica, she worked at The Wall Street Journal, where she led a privacy investigative team and was also part of a group that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of corporate scandals. She has also written two books, one of which was about privacy.
At ProPublica, Ms. Angwin’s team demonstrated how Facebook’s ad tools could be used to illegally discriminate against people of certain races, investigated racial bias in criminal sentencing software and examined how African-Americans were overcharged for car insurance. Mr. Larson was generally her partner on investigations, she said on a podcast last fall, where “he’s sort of the programmer, I’m the journalist, although I think we’re both a little of both.”
The seven members of The Markup’s editorial staff sent the site’s management and Mr. Newmark a letter supporting Ms. Angwin on Monday, saying, “We joined on to The Markup because we believe in Julia Angwin’s work.” The letter was posted on Twitter from an account named “The Real Team Markup” on Tuesday.
At least four journalists said on Twitter that they had resigned from The Markup following Ms. Angwin’s departure.
Mr. Newmark did not respond to a request for comment.
In her letter to Mr. Newmark, which sought his intervention, Ms. Angwin said that Ms. Gardner wanted The Markup to be a “cause” rather than a “publication.”
She also said Ms. Gardner had ranked reporters in job interviews according to how negative they were regarding tech companies, viewing that as a favorable trait, and had urged Ms. Angwin to run headlines on future stories like, “Facebook is a dumpster fire.” Ms. Angwin said her objections led Ms. Gardner to seek her removal as editor in chief.
Ms. Gardner said in an email that although she regularly asked candidates for their perspectives about technology, in part to gauge how informed they were, “the assertion that more negative takes were ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is untrue.” She also said she had not urged headlines like the one Ms. Angwin cited.
“Internally at The Markup we’ve had many conversations about tone and style, which have included kicking around questions about whether we would ever use colloquial language like ‘dumpster fire,’” Ms. Gardner said. “This was a hypothetical raised as a question, not an imperative.”
On March 29, according to Ms. Angwin’s letter, Ms. Gardner asked Ms. Angwin to step down to become a columnist and write opinion articles. She declined, citing her responsibility to pursue the vision she shared with donors and the employees she had hired.
“Julia Angwin is a groundbreaking investigative journalist with a powerful vision and the highest ethics and integrity,” Jesse Eisinger, senior reporter and editor at ProPublica, said in an email, noting that he and Ms. Angwin were friends. “Sue Gardner has little to no investigative experience. To fire Angwin is to sign The Markup’s death warrant.”
Ms. Angwin said in her letter that while Ms. Gardner had promised her an employment contract with job protections for her position as editor in chief, Ms. Gardner had never signed such a contract. The company does not yet have a formal governing board that would be required to weigh in on such decisions.
Mr. Larson was the site’s managing editor and had previously worked at The Nation. He is a data journalist who has won a Livingston Award and was on a team that won a Peabody Award. It was a message from Mr. Larson sent on Monday night that officially told staffers the news about Ms. Angwin. It began: “Hey all. I am writing to tell you that Julia Angwin is no longer with The Markup.”
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