Don Hazen, the executive editor of AlterNet, was placed on “indefinite leave” after BuzzFeed News asked his oversight board about accusations that he inappropriately touched employees, sent lewd emails, and showed them explicit photographs. “I deny most of allegations," Hazen said.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images Don Hazen, left, at a protest against Fox News in 2004.

Don Hazen has been an executive at left-leaning media outlets since the 1980's, first helming the influential Mother Jones magazine as publisher, and, in 1997, starting AlterNet, an online outlet publishing and syndicating reporting on “the environment, human rights and civil liberties, social justice, media, and health care issues.” But five women journalists have told BuzzFeed News that Hazen sexually harassed them while they worked for AlterNet — touching them inappropriately, discussing their sex lives, making unwanted advances, sending explicit emails, and showing them explicit photographs, including one of his naked, erect penis. (The women have remained friends since.) A sixth journalist said she was sexually harassed by him, though she wasn’t his employee at the time. After BuzzFeed News asked Hazen and the board of the Independent Media Institute, AlterNet’s nonprofit parent, for comment, the board returned a statement on Wednesday saying Hazen has been placed on “indefinite leave” as a result of the accusations. “The Board of Directors of the Independent Media Institute takes these allegations extremely seriously. The organization has long been committed to maintaining a safe and equitable workplace. We have a grievance process outlined in the organization’s employee handbook; any complaints involving the executive director would go to the board chair, and no employee has initiated that process. We are now investigating the allegations in detail; in the meantime, executive director Don Hazen has been placed on indefinite leave, effective immediately,” six of the seven board members said in a statement. Hazen, in an interview, told BuzzFeed News, “In the atmosphere of lots of discussion about editorial topics like sex and drugs, I lost track of some boundaries I needed to keep. I had personal conversations with staff I should not have had, made comments I should not have made, and take responsibility for failure to recognize the implications of my position and age in supervising people at that period.” In an earlier statement, he said, “I deny most of the allegations as have been presented to me by Buzzfeed, and I believe that others have been mischaracterized.” Hazen has said that AlterNet was an early internet adopter that, at its height in the late 1990's, syndicated 150 newspapers in the US and Canada and had up to 7 million unique visitors per month, placing it among the top 400 sites online at the time. It has published top progressive minds such as Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, and former secretary of labor Robert Reich. The former employees’ allegations date back to 2008, and the incidents took place in San Francisco, where AlterNet has an office, or in various New York locations, where there is no fixed office. All six women agreed to have their names published. Eleven other people — including friends, coworkers, and other former employees of Hazen — said they were told about or saw the incidents. BuzzFeed News also reviewed Gchats and emails from the time describing some of the encounters. BuzzFeed News initially reached out to several of the women after receiving a secure tip about Hazen — the sender was and remains anonymous — that included some of their names. Four women in this article later responded to BuzzFeed News as a group. The others said they had begun speaking to one another after the New York Times published its exposé of Harvey Weinstein. Several of the journalists emphasized that Hazen’s support for their work was crucial for them early in their careers, as young reporters looking to break into the competitive news industry and make names for themselves at outlets with progressive values. Many of the women who spoke with BuzzFeed News said that the youngest, least experienced women — those with the fewest professional connections — were generally the primary targets of Hazen’s harassment. Kristen Gwynne, who worked at AlterNet in New York from 2011 to 2013 and is now a freelance reporter, met Hazen while she was covering a protest for a class as a journalism student. “I had no connections. I didn’t know anybody. He said, ‘Send it to me, and I’ll publish it,’” Gwynne said about the story she was working on. Shortly after, Hazen gave her an internship, then a full-time job. The work covered her rent, bills, and student loan payments — but she said his behavior toward her quickly became harassment.

“He would be pointing, and somehow my boob was in the way of the direction he was aiming for.”

“There was inappropriate touching — hugs and kisses on the cheek at the office,” she said. “He would be pointing, and somehow my boob was in the way of the direction he was aiming for.” Hazen said if this “possibly happened, it was purely accidental.” In one incident, during an editorial meeting at a Cosi sandwich shop near Union Square on Valentine’s Day several years ago, Gwynne said that Hazen told her he had recently seen a picture on the internet of a woman who “looked just like her” — then showed her a photo of a naked, busty, blonde porn star. Gwynne told at least five coworkers about the incident at the time or since, they confirmed to BuzzFeed News. Hazen said he remembered showing Gwynne “a photo on the web, of a movie star” but didn’t remember showing her a naked picture. In another incident, Gwynne said she was attending an event at which Hazen and the former publisher of the New Republic, Hamilton Fish, were also present. Gwynne mentioned to the two that she lived near a public pool in New York that was named for Fish’s family, where she sometimes went swimming. Fish, she said, looked her up and down and said she should dive into it while wearing an AlterNet T-shirt — as a “double promotion” for him and the site. Hazen went along with the comments. One of the women who spoke with BuzzFeed News said she witnessed this happen, and another said she was told about it afterwards. (Fish did not respond to a request for comment. He resigned from the New Republic in November over sexual harassment allegations, saying in a statement, “Women have longstanding and profound concerns with respect to their treatment in the workplace. Many men have a lot to learn in this regard. I know I do.”) In May 2012, after Gwynne had been working at the site for a year, Hazen emailed her the text of a piece she’d written on the New York Police Department’s “stop and frisk” practice, with “this is good” in the subject line. Gwynne replied, “When can we meet up in New York? Lots of stop and frisk stuff to talk about.” Hazen, in messages reviewed by BuzzFeed News, replied: “Are you going to stop and frisk me? I’ll see you at the Stop and Frisk event, Monday, right? Other than that, maybe Tuesday night up town… afterward test some edibles.” Many of the former employees who spoke with BuzzFeed News said it was common for Hazen to drink, smoke, and eat edibles with staffers, some of whom covered marijuana legalization efforts. It was part of the culture of the workplace, they said, and they were often as game as he was. But occasionally, they said, Hazen would pressure them to join, even when they had other plans or felt they’d had enough. Hazen said there were occasional company holiday parties at restaurants, where staffers would sometimes go outside to smoke pot, and that, “I never ate edibles in my apartment with the women making the charges here.” Liliana Segura, who worked at AlterNet from January 2008 to July 2010 in New York and is now a reporter at the Intercept, said there would be “these day-to-day, sometimes humiliating, sometimes just irritating postures” that ground her and other women who worked at the site down. Responding to the day-to-day characterization, Hazen said that he spends 60% of his time in San Francisco. Hazen would sometimes expect Segura to have dinner with him and accompany him to benefits or other events in San Francisco as his date when she was in town, she said, where he’d openly make judgments about her domestic and personal life with her then-partner. If she made other plans, she said, he would angrily complain, behaving like she’d done something wrong. “The sexism at the heart of this place was much more directed at women in ways big and small,” she said. “It’s strange to think about now how much we tolerated.” Laura Gottesdiener, now a freelance journalist and news producer at Democracy Now!, worked part time at AlterNet from 2012 to 2014 as a writer and editor. She was based in New York and said she had in-person meetings with Hazen every few months at his request — as many as 10 — which she understood to be a condition of her employment. Gottesdiener told BuzzFeed News she called these one-on-ones her “mandatory sexual harassment meetings.” Her roommate, along with a subsequent colleague she told about the interactions, confirmed that she described them this way to them at the time and since. At the meetings, Gottesdiener said Hazen would hug and kiss her — despite her going for a handshake — and ask personal, explicit questions.

Jesse Grant / WireImage for Niche Media, LLC Hazen