Teen Vogue has named a new executive editor after Alexi McCammond was ousted last month following employee backlash over a series of racist tweets she posted as a teenager.
Danielle Kwateng, a current Teen Vogue employee, was announced on Wednesday as the publication’s new executive editor.
Kwateng, who has worked at Teen Vogue for two years, was culture and entertainment director prior to the promotion, according to her LinkedIn account.
McCammond had resigned on March 18 as Teen Vogue’s editor in chief amid a backlash over her resurfaced racist tweets that she had posted back in 2011. She had only been announced as Teen Vogue’s editor two weeks earlier and hadn’t yet officially started the role.
Danielle Kwateng (left), a current Teen Vogue employee, was announced on Wednesday as the publication’s new executive editor after Alexi McCammond (right) was ousted over racist tweets
The 27-year-old was previously a political journalist for Axios and some had criticized her appointment given her lack of experiencing in editing or managing staff.
Kwateng, a Columbia University graduate, has worked for the last two years as an editor at Teen Vogue. She was previously a senior editor at Vice, according to her LinkedIn.
Teen Vogue broke its three-week-long Twitter hiatus to announce news of Kwateng’s appointment on Wednesday and post a letter written by the new editor titled: ‘What’s Going on Right Now at Teen Vogue’.
She addressed the controversy surrounding McCammond’s racist tweets, saying society has the capacity to evolve but ‘accountability is a critical part of that growing process’.
‘We at Teen Vogue have read your comments and emails and we have seen the pain and frustration caused by resurfaced social media posts,’ Kwateng said.
‘While our staff continued doing the groundbreaking and progressive work we’re known for, we stopped posting it on social media as we turned inward and had a lot of tough discussions about who we are and what comes next.
‘We’re not perfect, but we do know our place in the media landscape and recognize that our readers make up the DNA of our work. We are invested in you as much as you are invested in us.’
Despite the hiatus of content posted on Teen Vogue’s social media accounts, a number of staffers took to social media during that time to criticize McCammond amid the backlash.
Teen Vogue broke its three-week-long Twitter hiatus to announce news of Kwateng’s appointment on Wednesday and post a letter written by the new editor titled: ‘What’s Going on Right Now at Teen Vogue’
Kwateng, who has worked at Teen Vogue for two years, was culture and entertainment director prior to the promotion. She was in charge of celebrity and culture content at the publication, according to her LinkedIn account
More than 20 Teen Vogue staffers published an online statement slamming McCammond’s appointment as editor.
Kwateng had earlier said that the election of President Trump in 2016 had ‘recentered’ the publication’s storytelling about those who are misunderstood and misrepresented.
‘Across all of our sections, we’ve reported on topics like Indigenous rights, immigration, Black Lives Matter, sustainability, pop culture, sexuality, and more with a fresh lens that always centers on young people’s perspectives,’ she said.
Kwateng said she was excited about the publication’s future with its ‘diverse and brilliant staff of editors and writers’.
The saga involving McCammond erupted after she was named as the publication’s new editor in chief on March 4 and tweets she had posted while in high school quickly resurfaced.
The tweets, which were widely shared online, included one in which she wrote: ‘Googling how to not wake up with swollen Asian eyes’.
Another now-deleted tweet read: ‘Give me a 2/10 on my chem problem, cross out all of my work and don’t explain what i did wrong… thanks a lot stupid asian T.A. you’re great.’
McCammond also used ‘gay’ and ‘homo’ as insults online and questioned why an article about baseball umpire Dale Scott coming out as gay was ‘newsworthy’.
McCammond later apologized to Teen Vogue staff in an email.
Tweets that McCammond penned back in 2011 – when she was 17 and still in high school – began circulating on Twitter last month
McCammond issued the statement above announcing her resignation on March 18
She had previously apologized for the tweets a few years earlier when she deleted them.
‘This has been one of the hardest weeks of my life in large part because of the intense pain I know my words and my announcement have caused so many of you,’ she wrote in her email to staff.
‘I’ve apologized for my past racist and homophobic tweets and will reiterate that there’s no excuse for perpetuating those awful stereotypes in any way.’
On March 18 – days before she was slated to start the new role – McCammond officially stood down, releasing a statement which read: ‘Hey there: I’ve decided to part ways with Condé Nast.’
‘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 so tirelessly to share with the world – and so Conde Nast an I have decided to part ways.
‘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 said.
McCammond is dating former White House press secretary TJ Ducklo who resigned from the Biden administration last month after he reportedly threatened a reporter who was working on a story about their secret romantic relationship.
McCammond is dating former White House press secretary TJ Ducklo who resigned from the Biden administration last month after he reportedly threatened a reporter. They are pictured together in Washington DC last week
