Alexi McCammond resigns as editor of Teen Vogue

By

Robin Driver

Published
Mar 19, 2021

Teen Vogue’s recently appointed editor-in-chief, Alexi McCammond, has resigned from her new position before officially starting, following backlash related to anti-Asian and homophobic tweets she posted a decade ago.

 
The journalist took to Twitter on Thursday to announce that she had “decided to part ways with Condé Nast,” the media conglomerate that publishes Teen Vogue.
 
“My past tweets have overshadowed the work I’ve done to highlight the people and issues that I care about – issues that Teen Vogue has worked tirelessly to share with the world – and so Condé Nast and I have decided to part ways,” she explained in a statement.

“I should not have tweeted what I did and I have taken full responsibility for that. I look at my work and growth in the years since, and have redoubled my commitment to growing in the years to come as both a person and as a professional,” she added.
 
McCammond, 27, was supposed to begin working at Teen Vogue next week, but the resurfacing of her old tweets provoked widespread condemnation and led 20 members of the magazine’s current editorial staff to write a letter to Condé Nast questioning her appointment.
 
The journalist’s tweets had already surfaced in 2019, when she was working as a political reporter at American news website Axios. She apologized at the time and continued to collaborate with the news platform through early 2021.
 
However, the latest reappearance of the posts has struck a particularly sensitive chord at a time when anti-Asian hate crime is on the rise. According to a study published by Stop AAPI Hate earlier this month, Asian Americans have reported 3,800 incidents of hate crime since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
 
In an internal email cited by The Guardian, a Condé Nast spokesperson gave the following assessment of the situation: “it’s fair to say that Alexi McCammond’s appointment with Teen Vogue brought many difficult and important conversations to the forefront over the last few weeks.”
 
“Our most important work as a company right now is embodied in the focused efforts we are all undertaking to become more equitable and inclusive. Our commitment to these issues is sincere and unwavering,” the spokesperson concluded.