Moira Donegan Says She Created List of Men in Media Accused of Misconduct

A former editor at The New Republic revealed in a lengthy essay published late Wednesday that she had started the online list of men in the media industry accused of sexual harassment.

The editor, Moira Donegan, said she created the Google spreadsheet in October to allow women in the media industry to put in writing what many of them had long discussed in private: the names of men to stay away from, including sexual harassers and abusers. Within hours of its creation, the list grew beyond her expectations, as women shared it with friends and co-workers who anonymously added new names and new accusations.

“What was going on there was clearly cathartic for the women who were using it, telling their stories, encouraging one another, saying that it had happened to them too,” Ms. Donegan, 28, wrote on New York magazine’s website The Cut.

Ms. Donegan said she took the list down about 12 hours after she created it, when she learned that BuzzFeed had been writing an article about its existence. But it was too late to scrub the list completely from the internet: People had already made copies of it.

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The list, titled “Shitty Media Men,” had real consequences, not only for several men named on the list who eventually lost their jobs, but also for Ms. Donegan. In her essay, she wrote that she lost friends and a job after the list was published. (It was not clear what job she meant. On Thursday, The New Republic, the magazine where Ms. Donegan had worked last year, said she did not leave her job there because of the spreadsheet.)

The list also became a source of rabid debate in media circles.

And this week, writers and editors warned on Twitter that Harper’s Magazine planned to name the list’s creator in an article in the March issue. The writer of the essay, Katie Roiphe, told The New York Times on Wednesday that she did not know who created it and would not out anyone in the essay.

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/business/media/moira-donegan-media-men-list.html?partner=rss&emc=rss