This is terrible, actually. Even assuming the article was bad, the mechanism that you'd use if you had journalistic integrity would be to print an addendum or

This is terrible, actually. Even assuming the article was bad, the mechanism that you'd use if you had journalistic integrity would be to print an addendum or retraction, and, as necessary, suffix a link to this new document from the original article. Everyone with even a whiff of exposure to journalistic best practice knows this by rote. It's bog-standard, time-tested, standard operating procedure. The only reason to not do this is if you have something to hide. In this case, GQ had two things to hide: the original article itself, and its reasons for hiding the original article. In fact, this is so out-of-the-ordinary that it could be regarded as an action similar to the disappearance of a 'warrant canary': the author of the piece was concerned enough with the retrofitted censorship that he precipitated a world-visible incident, at the price of losing a valuable byline. Everyone, take note of who it is permissible to criticize, and who does the permissioning.