Vogue and Alexi McCammond part ways after uproar over racist tweets

Alexi McCammond, the 27-year-old Axios reporter who two weeks ago was named editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue, said Thursday that she and Condé Nast, the magazine's owner and publisher, have agreed to part ways.

Several staff members at Teen Vogue and Condé Nast had protested McCammond’s hiring based on tweets from 2011 in which she made derogatory remarks about Asian people and gay people. McCammond publicly apologized for the tweets in 2019 and again in the wake of her appointment at Teen Vogue.

“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 tirelessly to share with the world — and so Condé Nast and I have decided to part ways,” she said in a statement Thursday.

In an email to employees, Condé Nast Chief People Officer Stan Duncan said the company was aware of McCammond's tweets when it hired her.

"Given her previous acknowledgement of these posts and her sincere apologies, in addition to her remarkable work in journalism elevating the voices of marginalized communities, we were looking forward to welcoming her into our community," he wrote.

The uproar over McCammond’s decade-old tweets comes amid a larger national conversation about racism and violence against Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic.

At the same time, Condé Nast has been embroiled in a slew of controversies over racism in its own organization, particularly at Bon Appétit, where editor-in-chief Adam Rapaport resigned. Anna Wintour, Condé Nast's chief content officer and the editor of Vogue, has publicly said that that title has not given enough space to Black creators in its pages.

The resignation also adds another twist to what has been a dramatic few months for McCammond. Earlier this year, she and her boyfriend, TJ Ducklo, then a deputy White House press secretary, made their relationship public in People magazine to get ahead of a Politico report that called attention to an apparent conflict of interest: that she was a political reporter who had covered Joe Biden's campaign while Ducklo was a member of Biden’s campaign and then-White House communications team.

Ducklo is a former employee of the NBC News communications department, and McCammond was previously a contributor for NBC and MSNBC.

Ducklo ultimately resigned from the Biden White House after threatening to “destroy” the Politico reporter who had written on their relationship.