Jill Abramson opened up about her firing from the New York Times in a new interview with Cosmopolitan magazine that was posted on Tuesday.
In the interview—part of a media blitz she is embarking upon this week—Abramson said she wanted the world to know that she had been fired from her job at the top of the paper of record.
"Is it hard to say I was fired?" she said. "No. I've said it about 20 times, and it's not. I was in fact insistent that that be publicly clear because I was not ashamed of that. And I don't think young women — it's hard, I know — they should not feel stigmatized if they are fired. Especially in this economy people are fired right and left for arbitrary reasons, and there are sometimes forces beyond your control."
Abramson also talked about the intense public reaction to her ouster. Her dismissal set off a torrent of discussion about her management style, the place of women in journalism and whether the Times had treated her in a sexist manner.
"This is going to sound incredibly out of it, but I didn't in real time read what was written about me and losing my job," she said. "It was a survival mechanism." She added that her children were "were upset, and the loudness of the coverage was surprising."
Abramson said she has "watched every Yankees game" since getting fired, and traveled.
"I still love to write and report, and I'm doing some writing," she said. "I just handed in a piece this morning. A lot of news organizations have approached me. I know I don't really want to run something again right now."
Read the whole interview here.