Jayson Blair and the Perfection of Man

I've been a journalist much of my adult life. I'm not proud. In fact I'm something of a self-hating journalist, a "recovering journalist" I like to joke.

As a class, American journalists are typically profoundly self-absorbed, liking nothing better than examining "the media" ceaselessly, interviewing each other on TV and radio and in print. Most journalists consider themselves to be part of a special, priestly class and casually don a mantle of moral superiority. Spend enough time as a working journalist and you'll wind up convinced that you speak with divine infallibility.

Like people in many professions that require little in the way of formal training and nothing in the way of certification, the bulk of journalists are lazy and sloppy. Worse, when journalists are trained, they are trained that their primary goal is "objectivity."

As an alum of the nation's most prestigious journalism school, Columbia, and an occasional lecturer there and at other journalism programs I've witnessed indoctrinations in the cult of objectivity first hand. What "objectivity" means in practice is that journalists are made to collect 'he said/she said' quotes from various sides of an issue and to present these quotes more or less side by side without value judgment. It's an insane bastardization of what is supposed to be the journalists real responsibility---not to objectivity but to truth. Reporting truth inherently requires not only getting 'he said/she said' quotes and boatloads of confirmable facts, but also processing that information into a report that illustrates the truth of the story, not just the many sides at play. Objectivity in uncovering facts and interviewing individuals is a crucial prerequisite for reporting the truth--a reporter shouldn't go in to a story looking for what he wants to find. But objectivity shouldn't be the goal of journalism, just one of the tools of the journalist.

I saw a perfect illustration of these problems a coupla years ago during a period when I was effectively retired from journalism but engaged as an activist in a fight against a proposed land development in my hometown. I received a call from a reporter with a Gannet paper who was writing a piece about the fight. She had obviously spoken to the Mayor of my town--who was pushing the development plan--as well as to the developers before she got to me. I tried to explain to her the economic fundamentals of the proposed project---I forget the specifics now but the development was a boondoggle that would be financed by county IDA bonds, operate tax exempt, and pay off nearly all it's subsidized debt in its first year, throwing off $5 million or more in profits annually after that. She was incredulous. Could this really be true? She asked. Well, yeah, I said. It is all a matter of public record. "Have you read the environmental impact statement?" I asked. "The figures are in there."

"I don't have time to read that," she scoffed. My head almost exploded. In my early days, when I was working at a paper that paid me shit and was always understaffed I spent many long nights schlepping home voluminous EIS's for in depth perusal. That's the gig. At least that's what I thought.

But this reporter just wanted a quote from me, a quote from the mayor, a quote from the developer, and then she felt like she would be done.

All of which brings me to Jayson Blair, the disgraced New York Times serial plagiarist and fabricator who is on the road flogging his book, for which he'd been paid a $125K advance. Okay, so the book hasn't made him rich. But it has made him the center of attention, like another disgraced reporter Stephen Glass formerly a writer for The New Republic who followed a similarly crooked career path and wound up not only w/ a book contract but a movie deal too. Like a lot of journalists who never plagiarized or invented stories, I resent the attention Blair's getting, and the ease with which his mental illness, professional suicide, and generally immoral and unethical behavior have become career assets.

I met Blair only on a handful of occasions when he was writing for The Times. I had been covering Silicon Alley and Internet business and culture for The New York Times on the Web in a series of weekly columns when Blair was hired and put on the Silicon Alley beat for the print side. It was clear that he was a rank novice and probably in over his head, hired out of the Times' own internship program principally because he was African American at a point in its history when the Times was obsessed with "diversity." (Don't believe that can happen? My friend, a Hispanic news photographer named George, changed his professional name to Jorge because it helps him get work.)

Years later, when The Times finally uncovered Blair's deceptions in a piece of A1 self-flagellation, I was surprised by the extent of Blair's fuck-ups, but not by the fact that he got away with that stuff. If journalists as a class are self-absorbed, lazy, sloppy, hypocritical moralists more concerned with a show of objectivity than with a discovery of truth, then The New York Times is the standard bearer. Nowhere in the world of journalism is the culture of divine infallibility more ingrained than at the Grey Lady. And more than anything else that culture was responsible for the Blair incident. Blair was The Times' own creation, up out of their training program, made in their image. While I'm not saying the Times encourages plagiarism or wholesale invention, I am asserting that they continue to maintain a culture that enables it.

Which brings me to one final anecdote. The nadir of my journalism career was a lunch I and my then writing partner Tom had w/ a NYT business editor at a hole in the wall restaurant in Hell's Kitchen. I had written a piece for this editor---the first piece I believe that the NYT ever published on MP3 file-sharing and its impact on the record business. The process had been like pulling teeth. I nearly had to browbeat the editor into believing that file sharing was an important story ("These kids don't really represent a threat to the music business," the editor said w/ a dismissive chuckle). He finally cut the piece in half and ran it on D17. The lunch had been called to discuss the possibility of our taking our online column into the newly expanded print business section. We wouldn't be hired, we were told, because we were true believers and so couldn't be objective. Furthermore, we owned and operated @NY, a trade publishing venture, and that made us too close to the industry we were covering, he said.

About a month later that same editor hired two writers who published a competing local industry trade journal. The writers were women, so I suppose their hiring represented "diversity." A few months into the women's tenure on the job the ladies' trade publication held it's annual event---in which entrepreneurs paid the publication for introductions to venture capitalists. At least one entrepreneur was circulating photo copies of a NYT story the women had written about him to the VCs in an attempt to drum up financing. While the writers may not have sold their coverage, it sure looked that way. Taking money to promote entrepreneurs you write about was a conflict of interest so clearly drawn that I wouldn't have even had the balls to undertake it. But they did. In the end it got the ladies dismissed from The Times (after a little birdie pointed out the conflict of interest to the editor). For The Times is was just another day in the life.

So do a favor for every hard working journalist who ever tried his or her best to get the truth into your hands: stop the madness, don't buy Jayson Blair's book.

Comments

[Tom W.]

I can corroborate the above story, point by point - it was indeed a low point. And I remember the brief period when Blair was assigned to cover Silicon Alley for the business side - he came to a NYSIA meeting and promised (in public) to look for "positive stories." Uggh.

[Jerry]

Unfortunately I too can corrobate aspects of the story. I know both the editor and the ladies in questio Jason, your points are spot on (You know how much I love to argue with you so this is really tough for me to admit.) I know both the editor and the ladies in question; in their defense, though, I'd say the ladies didn't know any better (doesn't excuse them from calling themselves journalists or hiding behind "journalistic" freedom when they printed mistakes).
Mr. Blair, of course, knew better.

[bruce]

Wow! A Silicon Alley album of Jayson Blair reminiscences.

Tom W., I was probably the one who pressed Jayson Blair at the NYSIA meeting. If recollection serves me, I was moderating, and was on the warpath about the way Silicon Alley was being covered, in particular by the Times but not by the Times alone. (You might recall that I wasn't too crazy about how Silicon Alley reporter was "covering" the issues.) Didn't Jayson at that time write a big article about the drug parties at Pseudo? Or was that someone else? In any case, that was the portrayal in the Times, and I felt it was very damaging to the industry. The hype was horrible.

Should I not have pressed him and the others on this point?

Of course, in this as in everything else, Jayson was lying. He had no intention of writing "positive" stories. Nor did he have any interest in high tech -- I paged through his book at Barnes and Noble (I'm with Chervokas, I would never buy it) and his Silicon Alley period is dismissed in a few paragraphs as boring business stuff.

I have had the thought, now and again, that "covering" Silicon Alley only had a negative influence on Blair's ethics. After all, the "gold standard" of the day was Calacanis and Silicon Alley Reporter. Everything was made up and noone cared!

[Tom W.]

The gold standard, if I may be so bold, was @NY. The hype standard may have flown elsewhere....
Heck no Bruce it was your job to push him for good press, but when he said it publicly, it was way off the mark.

[bruce b.]

I agree that the SUBSTANTIVE gold standard was @NY. I extend a public apology to Chervokas and Watson that my comments above could be read differently. Please note the ironic "".

[Brian H.]

Unfortunately, the culture of sloppiness and an interest in the truth only if it happens to be conveniently available has survived l'affair Blair. I recently watched first hand as the Times' botched reporting of the events surrounding a local high school basketball game inflicted significant harm on the reputation of a school that in no way deserves it. When apprised of the utter shoddiness of its reporting, nothing approaching a correction or an apology was offered, merely a follow up story that still failed to get some of the most important facts out. The best that can be said is that Okrent singled it out as an example of rowback. The place is taking on the odor of GM in the early 70's. They coasted on their reputation for a few years, but shoddy product eventually caught up with them. Is there a Honda of the news business about to expose them for what they have become?

[chervokas]

Brian-

Nice to hear from you. Sorry but not surprised to hear about your experience. The problems of course with the news business are a lot bigger than just bloat and bad product management. That's why, frankly, is so important that the handful of national papers--including even USA Today just recently hit w/ its own scandal--do a better job just because it's the journalistically appropriate thing to do.

[bruce b.]

I would like to see Brian back up his charges with some facts. He is refering to the report of anti-Semitic chanting by some Trinity School students at a basketball game.

Is he denying this took place? What, from his point of view, actually happened? The Times had a source whom I believe they quoted by name. If memory serves me, the source's son was the victim.

Also, given Brian's well known conservative politics, I have to take his attacks on the accuracy of the Times with a grain of salt, unless and until hard facts are provided. I have to think that Paul Krugman's columns rankle Brian much more than any journalistic indiscretions.

My experience with Times reporters, with the exception of Jayson Blair, are that they are thoroughgoing professionals, with a wide variety of political viewpoints.

The comparison of the Times with GM is a little ridiculous. I, for one, am glad the Times is out there. I would not want to be at the mercy of the New York Post for a daily read. Despite the Times's shortcomings, I would hate to think of life without it. But then again, I don't have Brian Horey's conservative politics.

[chervokas]

Now Bruce I can't tolerate this kind of personal flaming. If you wanna flame Brian, who is my friend, you should start yr own Maoist blog. Seriously, civil discourse please and no personal attacks. Its just not right.

Anyway, Brian's correct about bloat at The Times. The NYT *is* a bloated, arrogant, out of touch, ivory tower of a place. They do a shitty job considering the sheer number of people who actually touch every piece of copy that comes out of that place. The reason no Honda comes along to eat the NYT's lunch has more to do w/ the fact that the general interest print news business is a lousy field to be starting a business in than anything else (tho' Newhouse did it). And now we know, it's out it the open, a named source in the NYT doesn't make something true.

[bruce b.]

Jason,

There was NO personal attack on Brian, unless citing his "well known conservative politics" is considered a personal attack. (Neither is the statement about Paul Krugman's columns a personal attack, and I stand by it.) I DID question his attack on the Times, he did not provide any facts to back up his case. He made a sharp accusation regarding the Trinity article: it is totally in line to ask him to back it up.

I DO take Brian's attacks on the Times with a grain of salt, as I said, knowing where they are coming from, whether he is a friend of yours or not. However, Brian MIGHT (or might not) be right on this instance... can he cite some facts to prove it? I admit I know NOTHING about the facts, other than having read the article, but I think one has to do more than make easy, and in this case vague, accusations.

And there is INDEED a history (to this day) of anti-semitism amongst the upper classes who attend elite private schools. Whether that was true in THIS CASE, i don't know, but at least the premise of the article was believable. Brian, it seemed to me cavalierly, totally ignored this point. Perhaps that was one reason why my post was a little tart or acerbic in language.

What I WAS doing was defending the Times. I stand by my statement that I am glad it is there... call me a Maoist for that if you wish. (and it is an odd accusation.. I am no more a Maoist than John Kerry or the late Paul Wellstone.) Many if not most of the attacks on the Times, I find, are indeed ideologically motivated. I did question whether that was the agenda in this case. Does doing this constitute a flame?

If one cannot disagree sharply (in a principled manner) on this blog with what has been posted, then I will not post. I certainly honor your wishes regarding the content of this blog. My post was one of POLITICAL controversy, which I assumed was appropriate.

We liberals and progressives are getting called LIBERAL an awful lot now a days, as an epithet. It is out of bounds to call someone a conservative?

[chervokas]

It's not the words, its the vitriol. The tone is what makes yr post flame-ish. It's the kind of tone that ends real discussion and chases people away and that's why I don't want it on the blog.

You and Brian have always rubbed each other the wrong way so in any conversation I think both of you guys leap right into the old battles. Who cares if he's politically conservative? That's irrelevant to his note about the Times. Brian didn't say anything about Krugman. You jumped into attacking his politics...it was off topic, vitriolic, and informed by your personal feelings, not a response to the post.

He said he saw The Times botch reporting on a local story. Perfectly believable as far as I'm concerned. He didn't attack the NYT's politics. Most Times writers I've known (and I've known quite a few) are like most other journalists I've known--lazy, sloppy, and not too bright. (I remember when Tom was doing leg work for the Times nat'l ed. reporter and that reporter was surprised when Tom explained to him that one could actually obtain campaign finance disclosure forms as a matter of public record!)

But I'll join the ideological fray--many of the NYT reporters are soft-headed liberals who approach a story with an agenda in mind and are really just "reporting" in order to find quotes to illustrate their beliefs. I have found this to be particularly true of many of the NYT female writers I've come across (two of whom I've had the misfortune to encounter here in my home town). Politically incorrect but that's been my experience. The Times guys are worse than most tho' because they have a sheen of arrogance that makes them immune to self-examination.

BTW, I hate Op-Ed pages, especially the Times'. Its mostly empty-headed blather. Krugman's good and Friedman is at least well informed. But the WSJ op ed page--conspicuously conservative--has long been a much better read.

[Brian H.]

Bruce,
I am referring to the Trinity-Dalton basketball game, and there are quite a few facts the Times failed to notice when they printed the story you read. Since you are concerned that I have some philosophical score to settle with the Times, I’ll offer the following comments from the Times public editor, Daniel Okrent:

(In Okrent’s piece, he describes the fiasco of the Times initial coverage of this incident, and its follow-up piece that failed to acknowledge the flaws of the first story, as the second of two recent examples of “rowback” at the Times)

---------

“…this was a classic example of the rowback. The one definition I could find for this ancient technique, from journalism educator Melvin Mencher, describes a rowback as ''a story that attempts to correct a previous story without indicating that the prior story had been in error or without taking responsibility for the error.'' A less charitable definition might read, ''a way that a newspaper can cover its butt without admitting it was ever exposed.''

It happened again on Feb. 7, on the front page of The Metro Section, in a story about an incident at a private-school basketball game. (Actually, it happens fairly frequently, but these two stories make especially vivid examples.) For those not attuned to the folkways of Manhattan elites, this one may have escaped your attention; for those more plugged in to local rites, there was no way of avoiding it. An enraged parent attending a contest between the Trinity and Dalton Schools charged that Trinity students had hurled anti-Semitic imprecations at a Dalton player.

The resulting coverage wasn't The Times at its best. Reporter Jane Gross and deputy education editor Jack Kadden took as corroboration a Trinity official's allusions to an ongoing disciplinary investigation. It was the sort of story, editors told me, that might not have made the paper on a newsier day. But on a Friday afternoon, with word going around that a local television station was preparing to break the story, even the unavailability of corroborating witnesses couldn't slow the train down. The article and its headline -- ''Anti-Semitic Slurs Mar Game at Top Private School'' -- didn't even suggest that there was a difference of opinion over what had happened. When I asked education editor Suzanne Daley why the story hadn't been postponed for a day or so while Gross sought corroboration more palpable than the Trinity official's ambiguous reticence, she replied, ''Because we're a newspaper.''

And, you might say, because The Times is a newspaper, the default corrective turned out to be a rowback. A week after Gross's article appeared, the paper published a story by Tamar Lewin that provided the textured detail that had been either unavailable or unexplored in the first piece: the fact that one of the accused Trinity students was himself Jewish; that the ''slurs'' resembled the sort of harmless, if juvenile, byplay you expect to find in an Adam Sandler film; and that some Trinity parents had charged that the Dalton parent who triggered the first story had gotten into ''a physical altercation'' with Trinity students. But nowhere in the second piece was there acknowledgment that anything had been missing from the first one -- nor, in fact, that there had even been a first one. “
----------
It seems to me that if you are going to put a charge of anti-Semitism in a headline on page B1 of the “paper of record” that you owe it to your readers, to say nothing of the people you are accusing of such act, to gain some understanding of the motive of the people involved. A pathetically modest amount of legwork by the reporter would have turned up the fact that the student who did the taunting was Jewish. It would also have turned up the fact that a) the Dalton parent involved in the story has a reputation as a guy with a short fuse, b) that his letter to Trinity’s headmaster describing the incident and demanding a response was faxed or emailed to every major news outlet in the city *before* it was sent to the school, and c) that the parents of the Trinity students involved were considering filing assault charges against the Dalton parent because he physically struck the Trinity students (causing a Dalton security guard to intervene). More than a few people have suggested that the Dalton parent’s actions after the game were taken to deflect attention from his own behavior. A decent reporter (or editor) who was not in a rush to fill a hole on a slow news day would have picked up some of this nuance in the process of doing his or her job. They would also have learned that diversity is infused into virtually every aspect of anything that happens at Trinity and that over half the families at Trinity are Jewish.

What resulted instead was that a good portion of the New York community is left with the impression that Trinity is a breeding ground for anti-Semitism – a notion that you conditionally amplified and echoed in your own post. It’s a fair bet that few of them saw the follow up story and even fewer know any of the unreported facts. What the Trinity students did was inappropriate and they were subject to disciplinary action by the school, but their behavior was not anti-Semitic.

My opinion of the quality of the Times product stems not just from this incident, but from a wide variety of data points -from the increasingly frequent public retractions they have made of late (in cases where controverting facts were easily obtainable), to my own involvement in public events and business news stories that were subsequently and inaccurately covered by the Times, to the experiences of friends in the PR business who have daily interactions with the paper. When you connect all the dots, you get a picture that suggests the professionalism of the place has fallen off a cliff in the last few years. I think all the recent angst and hand wringing in the newsroom there reflects a growing awareness that all is not well.

If you are purporting to be the “paper of record” and hold yourself out as the standard of objectivity and arbiter of the truth, as the Times does, then you have to publicly acknowledge errors, and for the sake of fairness, give the corrected version of the facts the same placement as the originally flawed story had. The Times didn’t even have the balls to acknowledge its mistakes and its half-assed effort to tell the rest of the story was buried inside the B section on a Saturday. It really tells you everything you need to know about the culture of the organization. It’s clear that quality and accountability count for little if anything. The comparison to GM in the early 70s is quite apt.

[chervokas]

Brian, Bruce-

In my experience the story sounds like typical Jane Gross, who is considered something of a career model for young, female writers at the paper.

Gross is a neighbor of mine tho' I've never had a chance to meet her. I've read her work for years/

These reporters seem to approach every story w/ a patina of middle class guilt, looking for architypical tales--newsy, but touchy-feely or human interest, yet at the same time sensational, at least to middle brow tastes.

Anti Semitism in rich suburbs or upper East Side elites is a perfect story for them. And you know the old saying in journalism, don't let the facts get in the way of a good story.

The Times is in a unique position, by virtue of the reputation that it has costed on for years and it's family ownership, the paper has consolidated it's position as *the* national paper by maintaining it's ambitions in a shrinking market.

But the culture within the Times--whose labor practices, btw, are horrible--requires that people either submit and become a certain kind of reporter, or leave. In fact the culture and the lousy labor policies haven't produced the best roster of reporters but chased many off, leaving behind those that will toe a certain line. That's the problem, more than GM-like bloat.

My editor, when I wrote for the Times, had come from a good paper in Texas and he confided that when he got to the NYT he thought he was going to be stepping into the big time but he was surprised by how bad many of the reporters, even "name" reporters really were.

The truth is, for a general interest paper, the Times may be close to the best we have; but it's not all that good and it certainly doesn't come close to living up to it's ambitions or even the basic standards that we used to expect from the best journalism.

Part of that's an industrywide problem. The standards are just lower now than they were a generation ago, when my wife's aunt and uncle were among the first generation of post-war gi-bill kids to launch Newsday. We're all just easier on ourselves now. And in the 1990s the low paying world of print journalism doesn't typically attract the best and the brightest to begin with.

At least it look's like Blair's book's a flop.

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