New York Times

[Guest Vern Gagne]

What does everyone think of this issue. Does Jayson Blair deserves all the blame? Does Howell Reins deserve to lose his job. What role did Blair's race play in him keeping his job for so long, after many complaints about his work. Will this forever hurt the reputation of the New York Times?

[Guest Vyce]

Will this forever hurt the reputation of the New York Times?

A guy can dream, can't he?

 

I've been particularly amused by this story.

 

What role did Blair's race play in him keeping his job for so long, after many complaints about his work.

 

Well, this story got a lot of play on the various networks this weekend, and EVERYONE was quick to say, "We don't know if his race had anything to do with this." But then one of the editors comes out today and says that it DID have a part in their reluctance to fire him. So go figure.

[Guest MrRant]

?

[Guest phoenixrising]

Jayson Blair deserves to be kicked out the door, but he isn't the only one. There's a reason why editors exist, and if they aren't doing their job their butts should follow Blair's. As for race...race shouldn't matter if the guy is out there plagarizing and falsifying stories. Obviously the Times didn't want to be seen in a negative light by firing a black man who for all intents and purposes seemed like a success story (though it's come out he may have been plagarizing when he worked on his college newspaper staff). By not firing Blair they just compounded their problems until it blew up in their face. Which is funny, cause no one except Times readers had never heard of Blair until this story broke. As for the reputation of the Times, I think it will suffer for a little while and eventually everyone will forget.

[Guest MD2020]

Editorial Heads should roll. I read that back in April 2002, one of Blair's managers wrote a memo that said something like "We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right Now." However, he kept getting promoted.

 

There is talk that Blair was Harold Raines "boy: (like Dr. Death was J.R.'s "boy"), and Raines wouldn't here criticism about Blair. If this turns out to be true, then Raines should be fired as well.

[Guest hardyz1]

Did race play a factor? Of course. Their motto was "We hired a black guy."

 

/Daily Show

[Guest kkktookmybabyaway]

"Will this forever hurt the reputation of the New York Times?"

 

No.

 

People that read the Times won't stop reading it because of this.

 

People that can't stand the Times (like me) will continue to rag on this rag.

 

What burns me is that I'm the same age as Blair and couldn't get any kind of reporting job straight out of college. Maybe if I was a different skin color and had Jesse Jackson in my corner -- I would have been happy to give him a kickback so he could put food on his bastard child's dinner table...

[Guest areacode212]

Even though I like reading the Times, I've been pretty amused by this story as well, and I've been reading quite a few blogs about it this past week. Andrew Sullivan (a conservative who used to write for the NYT Magazine) wrote, "Being barred from writing for the New York Times by Howell Raines feels like a huge compliment". Heh.

 

It isn't fair to the honest reporters who write for it, but the case does hurt the paper's credibility with me a little. I read a lot of Jayson Blair's articles, because they were on stuff that I was interested in (Jessica Lynch, the sniper case, etc..), and I always assumed that I was reading top-quality reporting, when it turned out that most of that shit was either made up or plagiarized.

 

From what I've read, Howell Raines & Blair were pretty chummy. Raines would often hang out at Blair's desk and chat about basketball. Raines should definitely resign. The most embarrassing incident to occur at the paper happened under his watch and likely because he coddled Blair, ignoring warnings about his maturity & huge number of corrections. Firing Raines would help restore some credibility to the paper, but unfortunately, the publisher has said that he wouldn't accept Raines's resignation even if it were offered. Too bad.

[Guest kkktookmybabyaway]

On Fox the other day (UH OH FAUX NEWS ALERT), Cal Thomas made the point that if a private/public business would have barred the public from an in-house meeting like the one the New York Times held the other day regarding the Blair matter, the same newspaper would have thrown a hissy fit.

 

It's amazing how the media don't hold themselves to the same standards they set for the rest of the world (I remember other situations where local media outlets have done the same thing -- years ago when WPXI-TV (Pittsburgh NBC affilite) canned an anchor (Kris Long) they didn't want to discuss it. However, if a big business would have done the same thing they would be all over that corporation asking why.

 

Come on Times, it's the public's right to know what you are going to do about this fiasco...

[Guest areacode212]

There's a surprisingly candid interview with Jayson Blair @

 

http://www2.observer.com/observer/pages/frontpage6.asp

[Guest alkeiper]

I give it 6 months before Jayson Blair is a FOX news correspondant.

[Guest Vern Gagne]

Newsmax

[Guest Cover of Darkness]

Eh. The Times is under USA Today, as the most recognizable newspaper in the world. It's the gold-standerd, and even though it has a liberal bent, almost ALL news sources have a bend one way or another. Unless you research the facts yourself, then you'll have to take somethings with a grain of salt.

 

The Times has seen scandel, and it will again.

[Guest Jobber of the Week]

I have only been exposed to three of Blair's articles (as in they showed up in the local papers here), and I may or may not have read them.

 

Overall, I'm ambivalent, but this sort of thing shouldn't continue in the future.