Scanning the four-page long account of Jayson Blair’s lies and deceptions, I can’t escape the feeling that all this hoohah over Blair on the Times’ part is misdirection. OK, the guy lied, fabricated, and plagiarized, that’s a fact and we all know it by now. But he wasn’t just some guy with a blog slinging off opinion and attitude as he saw fit, he was an employee of a major news organization with editors, publishers, and fact-checkers; why did it take four years for them to figure out what was going on, and why isn’t this question addressed by the Times?
That’s the real scandal, the fact that this sort of thing could easily happen again and again, and may well have happened in the past. It’s time the Times got with the real story and stopped all this foot-stamping hysteria already.
The media establishment has told us that responsible news organizations are more reliable than the blogs because of all these editors and fact-checkers, but who seriously believes that a blogger doing what Blair did could have survived more than a few months without being caught out? I sure don’t.
UPDATE: Drudge reports Times management is having an open forum with newsroom staff to discuss the Blair matter Wednesday:
You will be able to ask questions from the floor, or write them on cards that will be distributed at the door. In addition, we have set up an email address — [email protected] — where you can send questions, either in advance of the session or afterward.
Gee, I wonder if they’ll address questions from the general public sent to that email address?
The Agonist got caught within days.
Anyone want to place bets that the NY Times will begin to show a little institutional empathy with the CIA and FBI when they get caught with their pants down? Ah, who am I kidding!
Mr. Bennet, a clarification. It didn’t take them “four years to figure out what was going on”. It took them four years to act. All along the way, editors kept catching Mr. Blair. The metro editor sent an email over a year ago to the effect, “we must stop Jayson Blair from writing for the Times. Right now.”
Hot diggity dog, thanks for the post. Few things on the web are more unintentionally amusing than blogger hubris.
OK, sure, absolutely — the blogging world is far more “reliable” than the journalism establishment, with its trained corps of professionals out in the streets actually reporting news every day.
Whatever. It’s pointless to ask “who seriously believes that a blogger doing what Blair did could have survived more than a few months,” because few people — in the real world at least — “seriously believe” that bloggers do what journalists do in the first place.
I mean, you already said it yourself, describing blogging as “slinging off opinion and attitude.” What part of that characterization compels you to go on and compare it to professional reporting?
Jayson Blair was a miserable screw-up, and the NYT screwed up miserably. It’s wonderful to see the paper take a blow to its self-righteous sense of self. Journalism is apparently an imperfect craft. But to bring blogging into the discussion is quite a stretch. (Though dependably hilarious.)
This is the kind of post that always leads me to wonder… Could someone please tell me why the Cult of Technology has gained such fervent adherents among otherwise sane people? Technology advances are marvelous, and we should all be wowed by them, but in topics ranging from file-sharing to blogging there has emerged a kind of sect, speaking in quasi-devotional terms about it all. It’s kind of freaky.
You’re so close to a breakthrough, FOW, I hesitate to stir your beleaguered consciousness with a sledge hammer, but what the fuck.
The journalism establishment claims to consist of “trained corps of professionals out in the streets actually reporting news every day”, for sure. But what Blair really did was lamer than the work of the lamest blogger, he got away with it for four years, and his bosses knew damn well what he was doing. Apparently, it didn’t stand out until he cribbed a j-school classmate verbatim.
That being the case, is it reasonable to assume that your claims are based on anything but wishful thinking? Provide me some evidence, and we’ll have a discussion.
I think it’s about time someone started a trend of sending corrections concerning a paper to that paper’s most powerful competitor. (Sadly though, many papers don’t have local competition, so it’s probably not workable everywhere, but on a national scale it should work.)
Webloggers are no less likely to be fooled. Debbie Swenson hoaxed the weblog and journal community for many months, pretending to be the cancer-stricken impossibly angelic teen Kaycee Nicole. It wasn’t until she killed her off, and couldn’t fake a real newspaper obituary, that the ruse was discovered.
Robin, lots of folks already send corrections to the papers’ biggest competitors.
Blogs.
Who’s Kaycee Nicole?
Kaycee Nicole hoax story from the New York Times. Sadly, Jayson Blair didn’t write it.
Personal journals are fundamentally easier to fake than news and commentary blogs, and fundamentally less authoritative. And while we’ve had some fakery and plagiarism in the world of war blogs, it’s not as common as it is in journalism, or nearly as persistent. There are dozens of journalists who’ve done what Blair did, and only a couple of bloggers, out of a much larger pool.