Hasta La Creative!

A couple years ago I went to a party in Austin, Texas, during SXSW that New York Times media columnist David Carr held in his hotel room. It was low-key and very informal — Carr had filled his bathtub with ice and cans of cheap beer for his guests — and the mood among the tech-meets-media crowd (e.g., executives from Twitter and Kickstarter, reporters and editors from Wired and Mother Jones) was Austin-style chill.

New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson came to the party, and what struck me the most about her is that she didn’t mix. Shortly after her arrival, she planted herself on a banquette by a window where she was bracketed by two women — fellow Timesfolk, someone told me later — and the three talked only amongst themselves for the 90 minutes or so I was there.

When I had to leave for another event, I realized my backpack was trapped on the banquette behind the threesome, so I affected the universal we’re-at-a-party-so-let’s-mingle body language of sort of lingering/crouching at the edge of their group, beer in hand, without actually barging in. But they remained in a tight, three-way conversation, and though one of Abramson’s protectors glanced at me a couple of times (giving me an icy “Who the fuck are you?” look), their bubble felt so hermetically sealed that I found it difficult to even interrupt with “Excuse me, could I just grab my backpack behind you?” (Although after a few more awkward minutes, I did just that, because I really had to go.) Abramson seemed isolated by design.

Continue reading at AdAge.com