Sacked New York Times editor tells graduates 'I'm scared but excited'

“I’m talking to anyone who has been dumped,” she said. “Not gotten the job you really wanted or received those horrible rejection letters from grad school. You know, the sting of losing, or not getting something you badly want. When that happens, show what you are made of.”

She said she was asked by a student whether she might remove a tattoo on her back of the Times’ gothic T. “Not a chance,” she said.

“It was the honour of my life to lead the newsroom,'’ she said.

Alongside the parents, students and others taking their seats were reporters from news organisations including Politico, The Wall Street Journal and several television stations. The New York Times reported the speech, which was punctuated with laughter and applause, at length.

“I’m impressed that your achievements here have attracted so much media attention,” she joked at the beginning of her address. She said her biggest concern about speaking at the commencement was that “the small media circus following me would detract from you, the class of 2014.”

Abramson was introduced by Albert Hunt, a Bloomberg News columnist, who called her appointment by The Times three years ago, as the first female executive editor, a “seminal step.'’ He praised her for leaving The Times “better, stronger and more vibrant than ever.”

Approached by reporters after the ceremony, Abramson said she understood that the news media had a job to do - but she had nothing more to say.

“There were definitely different expectations,” said graduate Wade Collins. “Some people expected her to go hard at what happened. But she walked the line really well. And this was interesting. These speeches can be really dull.”

Since the publisher of The Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr, announced on Wednesday that she would be replaced by Baquet, Abramson had not publicly discussed her ouster. Sulzberger had tried to bring off a smooth transition, but Abramson declined to participate in a more peaceful handover, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation, said the NYT.

In his initial announcement, Sulzberger said only that he had fired her because of “an issue with management in the newsroom.”

A report on The New Yorker’s website suggested that she had been fired for seeking equal pay with her predecessor, Bill Keller. Those reports were strenuously denied by The Times, which said Abramson earned 10 percent more than Mr. Keller by the time she left.

A precipitating factor in her departure said the New Yorker was a controversy surrounding the paper’s attempts to hire Janine Gibson, a senior editor at The Guardian newspaper. Baquet was not aware that Ms. Abramson had made an offer to Ms. Gibson, and only learned about it during a lunch with Ms. Gibson. The job title was similar to Baquet's This angered both Baquet and Sulzberger.

Abramson, 60, had been confirmed as the speaker at Wake Forest for some weeks. Nathan O. Hatch, the university’s president, said, “We called her on Thursday, and she still wanted to do it.”

The controversy has brought more attention to the speech, Hatch said, and will perhaps have extra significance for graduates who are “coming into a world where they may have 20 jobs in their lifetimes,” and will need to learn resilience. For female students, especially, he said, “I do think it has extra resonance.”

Hatch, following Abramson, spoke on the value of teamwork. “Great teams,” he said, “require trust in each other.”

Near the end of her address, Ms. Abramson said: “What’s next for me? I don’t know. So I’m in exactly the same boat as many of you. Like you, I’m a little scared, but also excited.'’