Sarah Maslin Nir

Last updated
Sarah Maslin Nir at "Living City, Living Wage" discussion in 2015 Sarah Maslin Nir, Living City, Living Wage.jpg
Sarah Maslin Nir at "Living City, Living Wage" discussion in 2015

Sarah Maslin Nir (born March 23, 1983) is an American journalist, best known for her New York Times report on the working conditions of nail salon workers, for which she was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. [1] The story generated both extensive regulatory changes and extensive criticism.

Contents

Early life and education

The daughter of psychiatrist Yehuda Nir and psychologist Bonnie Maslin, [2] Nir was born and grew up in Manhattan, attending Brearley School. [3] Her brother, David Nir, is (as of 2014) the political director of Daily Kos. [2] Nir graduated from Columbia University in 2008, majoring in political science and philosophy. [4] As an undergraduate, she was the Style Editor of the Columbia Daily Spectator . She is also a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism (2009). [5] Before attending journalism school, Nir lived in London and worked as a freelancer for several U.S. and international publications.[ citation needed ]

Career

Nir initially freelanced for the Times, contributing to 11 sections of the paper. She covered New York City's nightlife for the Times from 2010 until the end of 2011, as the paper's "Nocturnalist" columnist, once attending 25 parties in five days. [6] [7] She became a trainee reporter in 2011 and worked as a rewrite reporter for late-night news, during which time she camped out overnight at Zuccotti Park with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, [8] and later reported on the dismantling of the camp. She was promoted to staff reporter covering Queens for the Metro section in May, 2013. In February, 2015, she became a general assignment reporter focusing on Manhattan. [9] [10]

In May 2015, Nir's "Unvarnished" exposé on the working conditions of manicurists in New York City and elsewhere [11] and the health hazards to which they are exposed [12] attracted wide attention, resulting in emergency workplace enforcement actions by New York governor Andrew Cuomo. [13]

In August 2020, Nir published Horse Crazy [14] which explores why so many people—including herself—are obsessed with horses.

Controversies

In February 2013, in an article on post-Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts in heavily Irish-American Breezy Point, Queens, Nir wrote about the community's lack of diversity and allegations of prejudice. [15] These allegations were criticized by Niall O'Dowd and other Irish-American community leaders, who stated that the assertions amounted to a "clichéd stereotyping" of the neighborhood by Nir. [16]

In July 2015, Unvarnished's claims of widespread "astonishingly low" wages were challenged by former New York Times reporter Richard Bernstein, in the New York Review of Books . Bernstein, whose wife owns two nail salons, asserted that such wages were inconsistent with his personal experience, and were not evidenced by ads in the Chinese-language papers cited by the story. [17] NYT editorial staff subsequently published a rebuttal, refuting Bernstein's criticisms with examples of several published ads and criticizing his response as industry advocacy. [18] The independent NYT Public Editor also reported that she had previously corresponded with Bernstein and looked into his complaints, and expressed her belief that the story's reporting was sound. [19] In August 2015, several nail salons temporarily shut [20] in protest against the new law requiring salons to purchase wage bonds as security for any unpaid wages.

In September and October 2015, hundreds of nail salon owners and workers protested at the NYT offices several times, in response to the story and the ensuing New York State crackdown. [21] [22] (A fifth protest was also held a year later after at the "NYT" offices in response to a new rule instituted by Governor Cuomo in response to the article requiring all nail salons in New York State to have ventilation systems, the first such rule in the country.) [23]

In October 2015, Reason published a three part re-reporting of the story by Jim Epstein, charging that the series was filled with misquotes and factual errors with respect to both its claims of illegally low wages and of health hazards. Epstein also argued that the NYT had mistranslated the ads cited in its rebuttal of Bernstein, and that those ads actually validated Bernstein's argument. [24] [25] [26] In November 2015, the NYT public editor concluded that the exposé's "findings, and the language used to express them, should have been dialed back — in some instances substantially" and recommended that "The Times write further follow-up stories, including some that re-examine its original findings and that take on the criticism from salon owners and others — not defensively but with an open mind." [27]

In November 2015, a follow-on nail salons story by Nir charged that state legislator Ron Kim had reversed his position on nail salon reforms after receiving an influx of campaign contributions from nail salon owners. [28] Shortly afterward, Reason and Crain's New York Business published stories refuting those allegations. [29] [30]

In December 2015, the Columbia Journalism Review investigated the effects of Nir's Unvarnished series on nail salon workers and owners, concluding that many nail salon workers were empowered and saw working conditions improved as a result of attention and legal reforms spurred by the reporting. The article praised Nir's exposure of exploitation and racism within the nail salon industry, but also acknowledged criticisms of her reporting, finding that "At times, though, Nir does seem to overstate the case against salon owners." [31]

Awards and recognition

In September 2015, Nir was recognized with the New York Newswomen's Club award for in-depth reporting. [32]

In November 2015, The Forward named Nir one of the 2015 Forward 50. [33]

Nir was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting for Unvarnished. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pulitzer Prize</span> Award for achievements in journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States

The Pulitzer Prizes are two dozen annual awards given by Columbia University in New York for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters." They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fortune as a newspaper publisher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charlie Savage (author)</span> American author and newspaper reporter born (1975)

Charlie Savage is an American author and newspaper reporter with The New York Times. In 2007, when employed by The Boston Globe, he was a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. He writes about national security legal policy, including presidential power, surveillance, drone strikes, torture, secrecy, leak investigations, military commissions, war powers, and the U.S. war on terrorism prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Clifford J. Levy is deputy publisher of two Times company publications, the Wirecutter and The Athletic. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and considered one of the main architects of the digital transformation of The New York Times.

Anne Elise Kornblut is a Pulitzer Prize–winning American journalist who is currently serving as Vice President of Global Curation at Facebook. Kornblut has previously served as the deputy national editor of The Washington Post, overseeing national politics, national security and health/science/environmental coverage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dean Baquet</span> American journalist (born 1956)

Dean P. Baquet is an American journalist. He served as the editor-in-chief of The New York Times from May 2014 to June 2022. Between 2011 and 2014 Baquet was managing editor under the previous executive editor Jill Abramson. He is the first Black person to have been executive editor.

Nan C. Robertson was an American journalist, author and instructor in journalism. Her awards included a Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pommes Frites</span> Restaurant in New York, United States

Pommes Frites is a New York City restaurant which specializes in Belgian-style fries. The restaurant was located in the East Village at 123 2nd Avenue, but relocated to 128 MacDougal Street after the original building was destroyed in a 2015 natural gas explosion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jo Becker</span> American reporter and author

Jo Becker is an American journalist and author and a three-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. She works as an investigative reporter for The New York Times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isabel Wilkerson</span> American journalist (born 1961)

Isabel Wilkerson is an American journalist and the author of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (2010) and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020). She is the first woman of African-American heritage to win the Pulitzer Prize in journalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sheri Fink</span> American journalist

Sheri Fink is an American journalist who writes about health, medicine and science.

Sarah Ellison is a reporter for The Washington Post. Previously, she served as a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, where she covered politics, culture, and media. Ellison is a regular commentator on CNN, NBC, MSNBC, and other news outlets. She is also a frequent guest on programs such as WNYC, PBS NewsHour, and Democracy Now!

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Cohen (journalist)</span> American journalist and professor

Sarah Cohen is an American journalist, author, and professor. Cohen is a proponent of, and teaches classes on, computational journalism and authored the book "Numbers in the Newsroom: Using math and statistics in the news."

Sarah Stillman is an American professor, staff writer at The New Yorker magazine, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist focusing on immigration policy, the criminal justice system, and the impacts of climate change on workers. Stillman won a National Magazine Award in 2012 for her reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan and again in 2019 for her article in The New Yorker on deportation as a death sentence. She won a 2012 George Polk Award for her reporting on the high-risk use of young people as confidential informants in the war on drugs, and a second Polk Award in 2021 for coverage of migrant workers and climate change. She also won the 2012 Hillman Prize. In 2016, she was named a MacArthur Fellow. She won a 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for her coverage in The New Yorker about troubling injustices in felony murder prosecutions in the U.S.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ron Kim (politician)</span> American politician

Ronald Tae Sok Kim is an American politician from New York City. He serves in the New York State Assembly representing the 40th District, which includes portions of Whitestone, Flushing, College Point, and Murray Hill in Queens. First elected in November 2012, Kim became the first Korean American elected in New York State. Speaker Carl Heastie appointed him as Vice-Chair of the Majority Conference of the New York State Assembly in January 2017 and Chair of Committee on Aging in January 2021.

The Front Page Award is an award given by the Newswomen's Club of New York to honor journalistic achievement by women. It has been given annually since 1937.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maggie Haberman</span> American journalist (born 1973)

Maggie Lindsy Haberman is an American journalist, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and a political analyst for CNN. She previously worked as a political reporter for the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and Politico. She wrote about Donald Trump for those publications and rose to prominence covering his campaign, presidency, and post-presidency for the Times. In 2022, she published the best-selling book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.

Ellen Louise Graham is an American journalist and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She was a writer and editor of The Wall Street Journal from 1971 to 1998. After her retirement, she wrote columns for the Wall Street Journal regarding the challenged that come with retirement. She currently resides in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Jessica Silver-Greenberg is a business reporter for The New York Times whose investigative reporting on consumer financial issues has been cited in the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Congress.

A migrant nail salon worker is a nail technician, manicurist, esthetician, or masseuse working in a Migrant, often Asian–owned nail salon in America. These workers are typically women who have immigrated from South Korea, though there are also Latina and Chinese immigrants employed by these shops. The majority of women who work in these nail salons are paid low wages, exposed to dangerous chemicals because of weak regulations, and develop complicated relationships with their clients, largely due to language differences and contradicting views on what constitutes quality customer service. Most Korean-owned nail salons are located in New York, and in reaction to a 2015 New York Times exposé documenting corruption within the state's nail salon industry, Gov. Andrew Cuomo created the New York State Nail Industry Enforcement Task Force, and signed into law stricter salon regulations and required the posting of wage bonds.

References

  1. 1 2 "2016 Pulitzer Prizes". pulitzer.org. April 18, 2016. Retrieved April 20, 2016.
  2. 1 2 Joseph Berger (July 19, 2014). "Yehuda Nir, a Psychiatrist and Holocaust Survivor, Dies at 84". New York Times.
  3. "Law and Disorder | Only in New York | Arts Initiative Columbia University". artsinitiative.columbia.edu. Archived from the original on April 10, 2017. Retrieved 2017-04-09.
  4. Kernochan, Rose (Fall 2020). "Riding High". Columbia College Today. Retrieved November 11, 2020.
  5. "Sara Maslin Nir". WikiCU.
  6. "Timestopics: Sara Maslin Nir". The New York Times.
  7. "Sarah Maslin Nir '09 is the Nocturnalist". Columbia Journalism School. Archived from the original on July 10, 2011.
  8. Randall, Eric. "Zuccotti Park Is Not a Nightclub". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2017-04-09.
  9. Jeremy Barr. "New York Times Metro Makes Some Changes".
  10. Barr, Jeremy (2015-02-19). "New York Times Metro makes some changes". Politico.
  11. Nir, Sarah Maslin (2015-05-07). "The Price of Nice Nails". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2015-11-04.
  12. Nir, Sarah Maslin (2015-05-08). "Perfect Nails, Poisoned Workers". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2015-11-04.
  13. Sarah Maslin Nir (May 11, 2015). "Cuomo Orders Emergency Measures to Protect Workers at Nail Salons". New York Times.
  14. Sarah Maslin Nir (August 4, 2020). "Horse Crazy". BookDorks.
  15. Nir, Sarah Maslin (2013-02-17). "Ireland Aids Breezy Point, Queens, After Hurricane Sandy". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2015-12-09.
  16. O'Dowd, Niall (2013-02-18). "Defending the Irish community against racist claims in New York Times -- Same old story as Hurricane Sandy relief efforts questioned". IrishCentral. Retrieved 2015-12-08.
  17. Richard Bernstein (July 25, 2015). "What the 'Times' Got Wrong About Nail Salons". New York Review of Books .
  18. Dean Baquet; Wendell Jamieson; Michael Luo (July 28, 2015). "Rebuttal to The NYRB's Article on NYT Nail Salon Series". The New York Times.
  19. Margaret Sullivan (July 29, 2015). "Criticism of 'Unvarnished' Brings a Strong Times Defense". The New York Times.
  20. Tempey, Nathan. "Nail Salons Close In Protest Of State Crackdown". Gothamist. Archived from the original on 2015-12-12. Retrieved 2015-12-09.
  21. Sage Lazzaro (September 21, 2015). "Nail Salon Industry Stages Protest Outside NYT Building". Observer.
  22. Helen Holmes (October 7, 2015). "Here's Why Hundreds of Nail Salon Owners Are Protesting the New York Times". Jezebel.
  23. "Governor Cuomo Announces New Ventilation Standards for Nail Salons". Governor of New York State (Press release). July 22, 2016. Archived from the original on July 27, 2016.
  24. Jim Epstein (October 27, 2015). "The New York Times' Nail Salons Series Was Filled with Misquotes and Factual Errors. Here's Why That Matters. (Part 1)". Reason.
  25. Jim Epstein (October 28, 2015). "How The New York Times' Flawed Reporting on Nail Salons Closed Opportunities For Undocumented Immigrants (Part 2)". Reason.
  26. Jim Epstein (October 29, 2015). "The New York Times Says Working in Nail Salons Causes Cancer and Miscarriages. The Evidence Says Otherwise. (Part 3)". Reason.
  27. "New Questions on Nail Salon Investigation, and a Times Response". Public Editor's Journal. 6 November 2015. Retrieved 2015-11-17.
  28. Nir, Sarah Maslin (2015-11-08). "Backed by Nail Salon Owners, a New York Legislator Now Fights Reforms". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2015-12-07.
  29. "The New York Times Publishes Another Misleading Story About Nail Salons". Reason.com. 10 November 2015. Retrieved 2015-12-07.
  30. "Nailed by the Times, Queens assemblyman wages war for reputation". Crain's New York Business. 13 November 2015. Retrieved 2015-12-07.
  31. "The everyday effects of The New York Times' nail salon exposé". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved 2016-04-20.
  32. "Front Page Awards Winners Announced - Newswomen's Club of New York". Newswomen's Club of New York. Archived from the original on 2015-12-25. Retrieved 2015-12-06.
  33. "Forward 50 2015". Forward.com. Retrieved 2015-11-11.