By: E&P Staff Appearing on the Today show this morning, former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines spoke candidly with Matt Lauer about his new book
The One That Got Away, and reflected on the scandal that destroyed his tenure as top editor at the Gray Lady.
Raines admitted to being "mean spirited" in his depiction of Jayson Blair as a "dwarf" and a "gremlin" in the book. He said that part of writing a memoir is about trying to relive the emotions related to events in one's history, and that that may have bled into his descriptions of the fabulist.
The former editor said that despite being a white liberal from the South, he did not give Blair a "double chance on lying" because he was black (and noted that Blair's deceptions began four or five years before Raines took over as editor at the paper), and admitted the paper's editorial staff took too long in catching him. Rather, Raines said, the second chance he gave Blair was in allowing him to come back from drug and alcohol addiction and continue writing for the paper.
Raines said he wasn't surprised or disappointed by the way he was treated by other staffers at the Times, many of whom seemed to revel at his downfall.
"Given the nature of the Times as an institution -- highly political, highly competitive -- everyone was doing exactly what I was at that stage of my career," said Raines. "When you get a crisis like that in a highly traditional organization, people hunker down to see what's standing because they know that leaders are temporary and the institution goes on."
Read Greg Mitchell's preview of Raines' memoir.
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