Of all the words used to describe Jayson Blair, the young reporter who deceived his bosses and readers of The New York Times, the most troubling might be “hungry.”
That’s the word the Times’ executive editor used to justify assigning Blair to the paper’s ongoing coverage of the Washington-area sniper shootings last year, even after the paper was aware something might be faulty in his ethical hard-wiring.
Hungry? Hell, we’re all hungry.
Every journalist of any merit wants a piece of a great story and should be willing to bust butt to get it. But most of us know, easily, without a whole lot of hand-wringing, where the line is drawn between getting a great story and making one up.
Blair knew it too. He crossed it routinely — from putting datelines on stories where he wasn’t to fabricating quotes from unnamed sources to stealing from the work of others.
Reckless. Sloppy. Hard to reach. Prone to mistakes. Those words were also used to describe Blair’s four years at the Times. Add “hungry” to that list and you’ve created a mutant, self-destructive reporter who will take your newspaper’s credibility down with him.
Since the story of Blair’s firing broke, many readers have called or written asking, could it happen here?
My short answer is that it’s hard to imagine. Not that a smart, deceptive reporter couldn’t beat a system of checks and balances in the news-gathering process. It has happened at a lot of newspapers.
But not more than once with the same person and, I’m confident, not if most newspapers had the kind of evidence the Times had but apparently chose to minimize.
For the vast majority of mistake-prone journalists — here, at The New York Times and other reputable publications — most accuracy ills are cured by remedial fact-checking exercises and slowing down on deadline. For repeat offenders, or the pathologically impaired, the best action is to show them the door.
Why did Blair’s editors, especially those at the top, minimize his many mistakes? What caused them to take the risk of promoting him even when some of his supervisors said he needed to be watched closely?
Much has been made about the “diversity” aspect of Blair’s tenure at the Times. He was a young black journalist with impressive internships who did what rarely happens — secure a job with The New York Times immediately after college. (It turns out that was a lie too. Now 27, he still hasn’t completed his degree work.)
According to the Times’ self-examination of the scandal, Blair seemed quite adept at “playing up” to his older mentors. White reporters have been doing that for years.
Like many newsrooms, the Times works hard to attract minority journalists, sometimes creating special apprenticeship-type programs to nurture them in the early years. Editors there might have felt they had invested in Blair and were determined for him to do well.
That’s a worthy sentiment, but such programs at big-city newspapers — for minorities or anyone else — rarely capture the true apprenticeship journalists need to succeed. Too often they are window dressing for the larger issue of how to effectively expand the pool of minority journalists.
The tried and true method for success is for young journalists to start at smaller newspapers, where the people you write about have no qualms about calling you up or calling you out on the street when you make a mistake.
Community newspaper readers have an effective way of making you feel the consequences of screwing up. They watch your every word and aren’t afraid to tell your boss if you fail again. You can’t come close to achieving that learning curve at a place such as The New York Times.
At the end of this sad affair, I’m left thinking that what Jayson Blair needed more than anything else was a small-town editor to tell him to get it right or get the hell out of the business. And what Blair’s editors needed was a small-town publisher willing to fire those responsible for letting it get out of hand.
