Five Years After Blair Scandal, Howell Raines Has Few Regrets

By: Joe Strupp It is clearly a coincidence that former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines will be in town this week, exactly five years after the notorious Jayson Blair scandal that ended his Times tenure and created a credibility nightmare for the paper.

Raines, who has spent the past half-decade on different writing projects and fixing up his home in rural Henryville, Pa., has a good reason to hit Manhattan: his son, Jeff, is slated to be on Late Night with Conan O'Brien with his funk band, Galactic.

"He and his best friend from high school formed the band and my contribution to its success has been not to give them any business advice," said Raines, 65, who plans to be in the audience when the show tapes Tuesday evening.

Still, noting the five-year anniversary of the Blair scandal, in which the Times reporter was found to have written numerous false stories, plagiarized others, and reported on places he'd never visited, Raines seemed mostly positive.

"I am proud of the fact that it set the standard for in-house inquiries," he recalled by telephone Monday, referring to the in-depth investigation the paper launched on Blair. "I feel proud of the fact that we had as close to a full investigation as any journalistic entity has done in my experience."

Blair, then 27, resigned from the paper on May 1, 2003. On May 11, the Times ran a lengthy, four-page explanation of his misdeeds and a chronology of its findings. In June 2003, Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd were forced to resign. Boyd died in 2006.

"I was proud of the fact that we never saw the [May 11] story until it ran in the paper," Raines recalled. "It added to the credibility of the report that none of the editors involved in handling Jayson were involved in editing the story."

Asked about regrets, Raines obviously wishes the scandal had not occurred, but also believes it kept him from pursuing a plan for the Times to take control of the International Herald Tribune and redesign it as a foreign edition of The New York Times. The Times had taken over the IHT in January 2003, buying out The Washington Post's share of the paper. But Raines said plans were in the works for the paper to become an international Times edition.

"They were going to re-flag it, I had the flag for the redesign on my desk the day I left the building," he recalls. "The idea was that it was appropriate at the time and we had a chance for success. The idea was to use the IHT to put a New York Times footprint internationally in Asia and Europe.

"It had a chance for success at the time we conceived of it, but the print business model has collapsed," Raines added. "I wish we could have executed it at the time. I regret for the paper we did not get a chance to put that into motion."

Since departing the Times, Raines has written another book, "The One That Go Away" (2005) and is working on a Civil War novel. He has also written for The Atlantic and is under contract for a monthly column in Conde Nast Portfolio through the end of 2008.

"My latest passion, though, is dog training," says Raines, who with his wife of five years, Krystyna, has two German short-hair Pointers.

Raines, who declined to comment on the current state of the Times, said he does miss some of the people he worked with, but not the daily news grind.

"Nobody comes through these events unscathed," he admitted. "In terms of quality of life, rather than sit around being morose about it, I get up and live a different life. You get to do something different with your career than you thought you could do."

Raines also notes that, since he is 65, this would have been his last year at the Times, given its mandatory retirement age. "This would have been my retirement year," he says. "On the personal side, I have no anger or bitterness. The result has been five very interesting and productive years."