The meaning of Jayson Blair

By Kimberley Jane Wilson
web posted May 19, 2003
 
I've just spent about five hours reading articles by and about
Jayson Blair. He is, in case you've managed to avoid the story,
the 27-year old New York Times reporter who resigned on
May 1 after getting caught at plagiarism. In five years he wrote
over 600 stories for the paper and it now looks like a good deal
of what he wrote was either incorrect, brazen lies, or plagiarism.
Because he's young and because Jayson Blair is black, his story
has been eagerly seized upon by people who are anti-Affirmative
Action and those who feel that young reporters should never be
given jobs at major papers straight out of college. The story is
also being relished by people who simply hate the New York
Times.

So much has been said and will be said about Jayson Blair that
the most obvious fact has gotten lost in the shuffle: This kid was
in way over his head.

In that situation most people sink, swim or grab onto something.
Jayson Blair chose to grab onto fantasy and other people's
work. Up until the end of this April no-one important at the
Times seemed to notice.

Blair was a student at the University of Maryland (he did not
graduate, folks at the Times only assumed that he had) when,
after a summer internship, he landed the apprentice reporter job
at the New York Times. Things apparently started going wrong
almost immediately. Although he was a talented writer and
charmed many of his colleagues Blair had trouble with accuracy.
Mostly, his mistakes involved small time stuff. He'd would
misspell names and get numbers wrong. Young and not so young
journalists make these kinds of mistakes all the time but Blair's
error rate landed him in the papers corrections column 50 times
in 3 ½ years.

According to a long and bitter May 11, New York Times story
Blair had other difficulties as well. He overspent his expense
account, used company cars more than was usual and racked up
a mass of parking tickets which were billed to the paper. In
short, it appears that young man wasn't reading any books on
how to succeed at work.

In 2001 Jayson Blair was promoted, over the objections of
metropolitan editor, Jonathan Landman, to the position of staff
reporter. Things got worse. He made five major errors in a story
on an October 2001 benefit concert for September 11 victims.
This was simply too much and he received a stern rebuke from
his bosses. Incredibly, instead of being sent to a department
where he'd be less visible and gain some time to learn his craft
Blair ended up working on the biggest story of 2002: the
Washington DC sniper case. He was one of several New York
Times reporters assigned to the case but he outshone them all by
coming up with marvelous scoops. The only trouble was,
Washington officials who were involved in the sniper case
insisted that Blair's stories were not true.

By the time the frayed fabric of Jayson Blair's career finally
unraveled he appears to have plagiarized whole sections of a San
Antonio Express-News story that ironically, was written by a
Hispanic reporter who had once been a New York Times
summer intern herself. This was too much for even his strongest
supportes. Blair's dream job was over.

There's one more disturbing aspect this story and it's something
that many of us may not want to discuss out loud. The paper
admits that it hired Jayson Blair as part of a diversity program.
His bosses presumably meant well but if I were an employee in
the New York Times newsroom I'd be outraged right now.

Did the paper's editors think so little of black journalistic talent
that they were willing to put up with someone who clearly wasn't
ready to be there just because of his skin color? What an insult
to the entire black staff of the Times and to all the brilliant
minority journalism students who dream of making it to the
paper.

Jayson Blair's story is not merely a sad tale about good intentions
gone awry or the plight of one young man. It's a serious blot on
the New York Times and coming so soon after CNN's
admission that it deliberately kept quiet about atrocities in Iraq it
casts doubt on American journalism.

The public has the right to expect that the news we read and
watch is true. Thoughtful people have commented that the news
industry has been drifting towards the land of entertainment for
years now. In this sensationalistic environment it's no wonder that
Jayson Blair happened. I only wonder how many more reporters
out there are just like him.

(c) 2003 Kimberley Jane Wilson