The Jayson Blair Affair, Three Years On

By: Joe Strupp Three years ago today, The New York Times changed forever. It was on this date, in 2003, that the venerable "Gray Lady" truly bared her soul for the first time ever, revealing the sins of Jayson Blair.

In a 7,200-word story, the paper explained how the 27-year-old reporter had pathologically misled editors, fellow reporters and, of course, readers with a long trail of plagiarism, fabrication and downright lies that had reached Maryland to Texas.

When the story broke on that Mother's Day, all hell broke loose with it as the Times sought to respond to inquires about Blair, the lengthy article, and where the paper would go from here. Catherine Mathis, the Times' vice president of corporate communications and chief mouthpiece in such moments, recalls working her cell phone almost non-stop while attending a Broadway show that Sunday.

Almost poetically, the production was "Long Day's Journey into Night," a bit too appropriate for the situation. "We just happened to have tickets to go that day," she said on Wednesday. "It has two intermissions. You can call a lot of reporters back in two intermissions."

Blair's ability to not only fake his work and steal stories from others, but also charm editors with a rising-star writing ability and gregarious personality, made for both a fascinating story of deceit and a tragic fall. Since his firing, books, articles, talk shows, magazine pieces and even joke Web sites have popped up.

But even more, the scandal prompted both the Times and the newspaper business as a whole to re-evaluate itself. While the Times booted Executive Editor Howell Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd soon after the disclosure, the paper also conducted its own internal review that spawned a new anonymous source policy, fact-checking approach, and overall newsroom supervision. In addition, the paper appointed its first-ever public editor, a post still in place today.

Raines, on the Today show hawking his new book this week, recalled the fallout, telling Matt Lauer, "We took too long to catch him and I was quite properly held accountable."

Other papers, from the Rocky Mountain News to The Washington Post, made their own changes, ranging from more scrutiny of Times News Service articles to tighter rules on sourcing, conflict of interest, and fact-checking.

Even more telling is how newspapers have taken to explaining their own mistakes. Transparency is the rule, as is over-explanation. When USA Today reporter Jack Kelley was found to have committed his own acts of fabrication over several years in 2004, the paper gladly displayed his dirty laundry, fired its editor, and brought in a group of respected outside journalists to review the situation.

Since then, any act of plagiarism or questionable ethics gets clear, in-depth treatment in most newspaper's pages. Just this week, when Tampa Tribune executive editor Janet Weaver was arrested on a drunk driving charge, editors placed the story on Page One, admitting that it did not have such news value but required an above-board approach to insure credibility.

A recent survey from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, out just days ago, indicates that public trust remains difficult, even three years later. The poll of more than 500 editors and reporters revealed that more than half had been accused of bias in the past year, while some 30% relayed tales of sources -- anonymous or
not -- misleading them.

Such data shows the public's view of journalists, and the reliability of sources, is still a fragile thing. Does that mean that all of the efforts to overcome Blair's deeds have failed? Or is such opinion related to other anti-press efforts, including right-wing talk radio attacks, increased publicity about media misdeeds, and growing blogger
influence, that go beyond Blair's impact?

And what of the Times itself? In the months, and years, that followed Blair's departure, the paper took hits from critics accusing it of everything from racism for firing the African-American Blair to letting him go without punishment for so long because he was black.

It is clear the paper has been knocked off its perch, in some ways, and likely for the good. Internal reviews that followed the Blair scandal have hopefully shaken up the culture that allowed someone like Blair to not only rise up the ladder, but do so with a trail of unethical actions.

Most would agree that the Times is stronger, credibility-wise, simply by its increased safeguards. But has it lost some of its towering post as the "paper of record" and the measure by which many judge news value? Perhaps a bit.

And does the Times hit as hard as it used to when stories contain lengthy, often cumbersome attributions that seek to describe anonymous sources as clearly as possible, without revealing them? Did the Blair scandal also make some lesser troubles that followed, such as the Judith Miller jailing and an editor's note for poor WMD
reporting, easier to criticize?

Or did the paper's fumbling of the Miller legal tangle, in which editors and the publisher too-quickly defended her across-the-board, then goofed by allowing her to limit her cooperation with the internal review that followed, indicate continued problems at the venerable daily?

In any case, three years after the Times' worst moment, the paper is clearly different, and it's likely that, at least, it is far more protected from fraud and outright deceit.