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The unraveling of Jayson Blair's news career has been interesting and shocking to media watchers and embarrassing to his employer, The New York Times. Blair, who repeated fabricated elements of his stories, resigned last week under pressure, after it soon became clear he did not truly report on the stories he was covering. And the Times, in an incredibly detailed investigation and mea culpa, writes about Blair's career, from intern to national reporter, checkered with various incidents that should have been red flags a long the way, as well as how it has damaged the newspaper itself. It describes Blair's work as that "of a troubled young man veering toward professional self-destruction."
Noting two turning points, the Maryland sniper coverage and the recent war coverage, the Times was faced with a number of conflicting reports about Blair's accuracy and integrity when reporting. After a thorough investigation, they realized he had been falsifying and plagiarizing his work. Things like Blair's laptop and cellphone enabled him to pretend to be at a story's location, like Virginia or Texas, when he'd really be in New York. Some editors were wary of his reporting skills, including Jonathan Landman who emailed newsroom administrators with "We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now." in 2002.
Gothamist is fascinated by the story because it involves so many different elements: Ideas about youth and race and ambition, coupled with the seductive deception that technology can encourage, under the guise of one of the most important newspapers in the country. After reading the article, Gothamist was stunned, by both the level of investigation and honesty (but there was really no other way the Times could go, aside from emphasizing Blair is, hopefully, an isolated occurrence, not representative of its 375 reporters) in the piece and the scope of Blair's "double life" - that as seemingly reliable reporter when really someone who took the work of others while not seeming to do much of his own original work.
The Times' editors' note, apologizing for the lapse in journalistic standards. A list of Blair's articles and errors.
Seth Mnookin interviews Stephen Glass in Newsweek, whom Mnookin calls "founding member" of the media "liar's club." Glass fabricated an unseemly amount of stories at the New Republic.
Updated, May 21, 2003: All of Gothamist's coverage on Jayson Blair, including today's Observer pieces.
Gothamist excerpts a few interesting parts of the Times article on Blair's reporting history:
Example of Blair at work:
- A freelance photographer whom Mr. Blair had arranged to meet outside the Cleveland church on April 6 found it maddening that he could not seem to connect with him. The photographer, Haraz Ghanbari, was so intent on a meeting that he placed nine calls to Mr. Blair's cellphone from 9:32 a.m. to 2:07 p.m., and kept trying six more times until 10:13 p.m., when he finally gave up.
Mr. Ghanbari said he managed to reach Mr. Blair three times, and three times Mr. Blair had excuses for why they could not meet. In one instance, Mr. Ghanbari said, Mr. Blair explained that he had left the church in the middle of the service "to get his cellphone fixed" — that was why so many of his calls had gone unanswered — "and was already on his way back."
"I just thought it was weird how he never showed up," Mr. Ghanbari said.
The article that Mr. Blair eventually filed incorporated at least a half-dozen passages lifted nearly verbatim from other news sources, including four from The Washington Post.
Day to day deception:
- In e-mail messages to colleagues, for example, he conveyed the impression of a travel-weary national correspondent who spent far too much time in La Guardia Airport terminals. Conversely, colleagues marveled at his productivity, at his seemingly indefatigable constitution. "Man, you really get around," one fellow reporter wrote Mr. Blair in an e-mail message.
Blair's early days at the Times:
- At summer's end, The Times offered Mr. Blair an extended internship, but he had more college course work to do before his scheduled graduation in December 1998. When he returned to the Times newsroom in June 1999, Ms. Rule said, everyone assumed he had graduated. He had not; college officials say he has more than a year of course work to complete.
- Charles Strum, his editor at the time, encouraged Mr. Blair to pace himself and take time off. "I told him that he needed to find a different way to nourish himself than drinking scotch, smoking cigarettes and buying Cheez Doodles from the vending machines," Mr. Strum said.
Expenses:
-On an expense report filed in January, for example, he indicated that he had bought blankets at a Marshalls department store in Washington; the receipt showed that the purchase was made at a Marshalls in Brooklyn. He also reported a purchase at a Starbucks in Washington; again, the receipt showed that it was in Brooklyn. On both days, he was supposedly writing articles from the Washington area.
Mr. Blair also reported that he dined with a law enforcement official at a Tutta Pasta restaurant in Washington on the day he wrote an article from there. As the receipt makes clear, this Tutta Pasta is in Brooklyn. Mr. Blair said he dined with the same official at Penang, another New York City restaurant that Mr. Blair placed in Washington on his expense reports.
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this is such an amazing story. i really didn't think the blair thing was a big deal until i read the entire article and understood the magnitude of his fraud. what i can't believe is how badly the management at the times fucked up. i mean, blair had been lying routinely since he arrived at the times- he even lied about graduating from the university of maryland. basic fact checking, the very foundation of good journalism, should have caught some of his lies back in 99 or 2000, long before he was promoted to being a full time reporter. in any other job, screwing up as big as he did on his early assignments would have cost him his job. instead, he got promoted. why, exactly did that happen?
and why did he spend all of his time in nyc when there was someone willing to fly him around the country covering stories, a job he supposedly was wild about all of his life? can someone explain that to me?
I wonder where his career path will lead after all this? where exactly would you end up after getting grilled like this by The New York Times? ...Fox News?
One of the issues with the fact checking is that most of what he reported was factually correct - it was simply grafted from wire stories and the online photo database of the Times. So even if you did check facts, they would probably be okay.
The stuff that's hard to check is blind sources and quotes. You can't easily go around calling every source on every story and checking quotes... for one thing, half the people will want to change/refute their quotes.
The travel expenses should have been the red flag of all time. Nobody working on a reporter's paycheck "forgets" about expensing.
And, admittedly, the Times acknowledged the difficulty in fact checking the unnamed sources... that's the difficulty in being the editor or publisher - it's great writing, but at what cost? I think about the kind of journalism Woodward and Bernstein did with Watergate - would that fly now? There are always instances of people trying to shortcut and circumvent the "system" - the case of L.A. Times photographer who doctored a photo from war coverage to make it more interesting. And it's not just in journalism. I guess at the heart of it, I like to believe the best in people, and most people like to do that, even in spite of nagging suspicions.
Your rehash of The Times's piece on Jayson Blair is not valuable when the piece itself says it all. An article that condenses an article is absurd.
Also, have someone fix your typos and break up overly long, practically unreadable sentences doesn't represent good writing, like the one with 76 words.
The Gothamist article about journalism that isn't well-written is ironic.
Mel, while Gothamist appreciates your comments about clarity, sometimes people don't have the time to read an entire 10 page article, hence the summarizing, which one could choose to bypass and go directly to the article, or read if one likes.
Also, thanks for the word count on our sentences. We're glad you have the time for such things.
Actually, Mel, I think this sentence is pretty much the definition of irony:
"Also, have someone fix your typos and break up overly long, practically unreadable sentences doesn't represent good writing, like the one with 76 words."
oh snap- grammarians and copyeditors are in the house at gothamist! sounds like some old school beef to me.
i'm glad blogs don't have to uphold the highest tenents of journalism. i'm glad blogs are allowed to use the word "tenent" without spell checking it first- in fact, i'm not even sure that is a word. jesus- if i was a journalist i'd be living in a box about 5 blocks east of the times building, like a common troll.
The word you're looking for is tenets. The web is a written word driven medium. Love it or leave it.
spelling and vocabulary is for those fancy suits uptown. that is, until MT adds a dictionary and grammar app for MT V3.0...
c'mon, something smells fishy about all of this. the times in my opinion is definetely out to make a scapegoat of this guy. to say this does not occur in a larger scale is absurd. second, one claim the times made was that there was pressure to diversify their staff which lead to mr. blair's continued advancement. well, here's another backlash of a misguided quota system. don't get me wrong, i'm in favor of quotas. you cannot just hire someone and expect because NOW that you've "done the right thing" you can just push he or she up the ranks in an organinzation. and can someone tell me why this guy was writing so many articles in the first place?
simply put, if the times changes their policies, it proves their implicit guilt on this.
p.s. i am not a writer, obviously.
Those last two postings are totally plagiarized from the one just before them.
I went to high school with this guy (graduated same year, etc.). Its totally shocking that he could do something like this. Its almost insane how he did this for so long. I wonder how long he thought he could get away with it...
Howell Raines should resign. His obsession with affirmative action is responsible for the Jayson Blair scandal -- which, in an instant, has hurt the credibility of every black professional in America.
this story shows clearly why blacks should take a hard look at how they are used by the left. jayson blair shouild have been fired a year ago. the loss of credibility is immense and the times, because of its idealogy, couldn't act. Ha Ha Ha. further there will be no outrage, as all media will act as if it never happened and who loses? Blacks lose!
the last laugh
Everyone acts all shocked this is happening, when in fact most of the crap in the NYTimes is hyperbole or fiction anyway. Wake up! Blair is one of many.
My first reaction to this story was- 'for God's sake, NY Times, why don't you hire me?'. I actually have the academic credentials. I have an equal amount of talent.
I will never be hired by the NY Times because institutions such as these simply scan Intern resumes for the "right" qualities. Visibility. An extraordinary ability to bullshit. Being Black and articulate was "right" for the NY Times, in Jayson's case. After bringing in the "right" people, credibility is doled out by the editors, with no strings attached. They "wanted him to succeed" so much (article quote), they compromised their own integrity.
He abused an incredible position without any evidence he acknowledged the privilege of his credibility. As a result, resentment towards affirmative action will probably build, and the victims of Jayson will be the talented, mature, and hard-working young black journalists who will carry his legacy of neglect.
Nothing fair will ever come of judging appearance before work, whether for good or bad. Perhaps the NY Times will seek out the less visible, but excellent writers of all races when they fill Jayson's position.
Could Sanaa please specify which other reporters ? "THERE ARE ALOT OF WHITE REPORTERS WHO DO THE SAME THING" ? he/she is referring to?
Affirmative action and race are the culprits here (as far as why Jayson got as far as he did).
Blair's mentor was African-American as well, and apparently made the case to well-intentioned but ultimately ignorant bleeding-heart white liberals that Jayson be given a second, third... umpteenth chance at succeeding. Voilà - you 'ave, as zey say in Paree - une SCANDALE!
Now here's some new food for thought: everyone is asking asking about the fact that Jayson Blair essentially entrenched himself in Brooklyn for the whole time.
Well - a friend of mine offered this: the guy had a drug problem. As this friend of mine (who once dealt with severe coke/meth problem and who therefore, now, recognizes druggie nuances) put it: "He was afraid to leave Brooklyn because that's where his dealer was. His credit cards were maxed out - does that tell you anything?"
Let's not also forget that the Times article stated that Jayson is currently "in the hospital". Who goes to the hospital for the simple act of being caught in a web of lies?
I kinda of feel sorry for Jayson, and how the Times really trashed the guy. I mean, how can he even now get a job writing for the local "Penny Saver", after the trashing that he got in the Times. On the other hand, he had it coming because he was given too many second chances. Something of interest that I found after searching for Jayson Blair on msn.com is his "resume" at his old college school. Its pretty impressive, and not suprising that the Times chose him as a summer intern. His "resume" is at "http://www.wam.umd.edu/~jayblair/WelcomeT.html"
are you crazy? jayson doesn't need to worry about work, what with the giant book deal he'll probably worm out of this whole situation. the great and terrible thing about america is our total lack of shame. in other countries, jayson would be an outcast- his family would be thrown out of their town and he would probably be forced to start a new life in america. unfortunately, we're in america- where betrayal and lying is rewarded by the media and entertainment industries. expect his book out in about 2.5 years- and an advance around 200-300k.
Jake -
A book deal?
Get real.
These days, this kind of loser usually ends up with a TV show as well.
Yes true, he'll probably get some deal with some Hollywood exec a movie deal in a few years. There was a reporter for the Washington Post who fabricated a story in which she won the Pulitizer Prize a while back, but after the truth came out, she had to return her Pulitzer. If I am not mistaken, she was offerered or received over a million dollars for her story from a Hollywood source.
i hate these lying journalists so much that my teeth hurt.
if you look at the bigger picture, this pretty much fits in with everything that's been going down in the last couple of years or so. it's just another crackdown on flaws in the system--part of the great big purging of America/wake-up call, right after the turn of the century. personally, I think the Times is taking advantage of the situation and taking a little ride, though paying a little bit out of their own pocket. everyone's thinking the same thing. these days, things are less than ideal anyway (the government, the economy); why not clean up while you can? better now than later. Blair is--in a way--a bit of a sacrificial lamb. he was at the wrong place, at the wrong time. and the Times saw the opportunity to create the spectacle and make an example out of the poor fella.
Good points, R. The amazing thing to me is how heated up people get about a screwed up, pathological liar journalist who got busted when we have someone like George Bush in office, screwing us all over big time, in every conceivable way, every ding dong day. I wish the Times would devote an eye opening, exhaustive 4-page spread to the Bush & Cheney circus!! Now that would be interesting.
Re John's reference to Janet Cooke, there was talk of a TV movie, but I'm not sure if it ever happened. When last seen, she was working a cash register in the D.C. area. So you don't have to worry about her having too happy a life, if that disturbs you. Stephen Glass, of course, just came out with a book that's getting trashed by reviewers. There's a movie soon to air about him, but it was without his cooperation or approval. I don't see him living the high life any time soon either.
Look at Tonya Harding (ice skating princess); she had her bf hit her competition in the knee. So whats she doing now? Last time I heard, she was on Fox doing "celebrity boxing". Oh well, maybe in a few years fox news will do a "celebrity boxing" tournament between this Jay Blair and Janet Cooke.
Who knows, but I actually feel kinda of sorry for the guy and for Janet Cooke; however, he should have known better.
Hi Jen and Jake! Just discovered your excellent blog. Great post on Jayson Blair! I'll be coming back. :D
is anyone surprised by any of this? stephen ambrose ("historian", author, plagiarizer), joe biden (u.s. senator, plagiarizer), george o'leary (ex-notre dame football coach,insecure resume padder/liar), and bill clinton (liar under oath, deceiver, and impeached nailer-of-fat-interns) did as bad, if not worse, deeds. The times hung this kid out to dry. america loves to believe in the fantasy, not the reality. no one wants an honest answer that is boring. this black reporter gave editors stories with sizzle. why check facts? we are all guilty of looking the other way as people cheat on taxes, have extra-marital affairs, etc. it is called the "human condition". i live life honestly because that is what i want my kids to know and see, but i don't expect anyone else to behave that way. today's society demands and encourages unethical behavior, so whatcha gonna do? trust noone, and certainly don't believe something just 'cause you read it in the times. gimme a break.
This is a great site!
On the Jayson Blair fiasco, not really sure that it is a race issue ... time will tell. I totally agree with Tony's assessment. As well, the media profession is always trying to out do each other, which is probably why the times turned a blind eye to his deceit.
Speaking of famous plagiarists, here's a good story on Ruth Shalit. http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/archives/cover/1999/cover0409.html
As a fellow (black) journalist, I must say I'm a little pissed off with Jay. I work in television. It's already hard enough to walk up to people with cameras rolling and convince them we're not going to twist their words around when the piece hits air. Blatant lying certainly doesn't help our cause. I really don't think this is punishment for race; it's punishment for audacity. You're just going to "make it up" in one of the most widely-read publications in America, and not get caught? That doesn't even sound right. Thanks, Jayson, for making my job a little tougher... Clearly, you're battling demons... I'll be praying for you.
I wonder if Rupert Murdock or Richard Mellon Scaif or some such rught wing nut case paid Blair to discredit the times????
I think this is a very bad situation, first of all, what does this say about affirmative action and diversity? just because your black or a minority that you can just fuck up and not worry about it , and what does this say about the New York Times , didn't someone even bother to check his facts and make sure that he did everythihg right , who the fuck we're his editors , maybe they should be fired too , shit rolls downhill ya know , and this is a slap in the face to everyone who has put in the hard work once they we're in that "door" because of affirmative action.
Shameless indeed. I heard Jayson is in negotiations with a publisher and may be getting a mid-six-figure book deal. Wow. If the New York Times could bring criminal charges of fraud against him and get a conviction, perhaps the Son of Sam law could prevent this. Or could it? Anybody know?
Did I accidentally land on metafilter?The NYTimes couldn't bring charges - the district attorney would have to bring charges against Jayson and I don't think that there are any laws applicable to the situation. There are two types of fraud: civil and criminal. I don't think that fraud of the criminal kind would apply here and that is what would be needed to trigger the Son of Sam law.
Anyone know where he went to high school? He looks like a possible classmate.
not familiar with NY Penal Code but just purused the section on business frauds... i wonder if a creative DA could convince a judge/jury that blair's actions constitute a business fraud...
So why isn't white privilege brought up when white plagiarists are caught, but every black person who may have had some help in cracking the old boy's club now suddenly suspect after Jayson Blair? Surely Shallit or Glass had a supporter or two at the New Republic. Why isn't this called affirmative action?
This article makes me sick! I went to school for journalism and I can't find a job in my field. Maybe it is because I am too honest! It drives me mad that these crooked individuals always seem to be the ones that land jobs. I am not saying that every working journalist is like this. What I am saying is that this guy is the reason that good people like myself can't get a break!
Recent events prove that the Blair scandal, contrary to the belief/desires of many, was in fact NOT a matter of race/affirmative action and more a matter of shoddy management on the part of Raines and Boyd.
In case you're not up to speed, witness the latest suspension of white New York Times writer Rick Bragg (http://www.cjr.org/year/03/3/bragg.asp) for Blair-like offensives. Also, it has been revealed that four other NYT non-black writers are now under investigation (http://www.nypost.com/seven/05242003/gossip/pagesix.htm) for possible problems with their stories.
All that said, as a black person myself, I find it absolutely offensive that Blair has the nerve to create a book proposal which is based on playing the race card and calls the NYT racist. I'm sure he experienced 'some' racial moments there (New York City isn't the liberal mecca some believe it is), but to befoul the NYT with a such a broad brush after getting such an opportunity and then cry racism is absolutely unacceptable. I also think this outlandish claim confirms that Blair is mentally unstable and very likely prone to some sort of criminal behavior. The publisher that gives this guy a book deal should be boycotted.
In The Observer, Blair compared himself to Stephen Glass. This is laughable. Blair's points in the interview would be totally valid if he, like Glass, actually spent some time offering contrition. But he didn't. In fact, he's laughing about his deception to the press. I think Glass is slimy too, but at least he went through the motions of "I'm sorry I did it" and he let some time pass. Blair's rush to cash in is just obscene. And to laugh in the face of those who gave you a job at the most important newspaper on the planet is just unforgivable.
jesus- that last comment is so idiotic that i almost want to delete it- but censorship is not what we're about here.
I don't think deleting the word NIGGER is censorship, no more than I think certain other high profile blogs would think twice about deleting the word KIKE, SPIC, JAP, or CHINK. I wouldn't mind seeing the word nigger deleted, I don't think you will get beat up for removing that very offensive word.
If you "don't" delete it, does that mean you'll leave "anything" offensive we say up here? Do you think saying following is offensive enough to women to be removed: CUNT BITCH, FUCKING DIKE BITCH, FUCKING FAGGOT so on and so forth. As a black woman, the word nigger is just as offensive to me as those anti-women/anti-gay epithets. I think you should remember that freedom of speech doesn't mean people have the right to post a verbal swastika on your website. Please don't be an apologist to those who practice cultural violence in any form.
Oops, I see the change. In that case, PLEASE remove my posts. (the other was posted by my brother bob)
I happen to second that sentiment and that's why I removed the word. It's one thing to base your hate for someone due to the person's total stupidity. It's another to fall back on race.