Also more important than whether the guy has even graduated from a school of journalism. This guy failed to complete his course of studies and yet got a NYT internship and was then hired on as a reporter. This is a job most experienced journalists with degrees cannot get. The NYT promoted an inexperienced rank amateur over the heads of well-trained and seasoned professionals. They knew exactly what they were doing and yet went ahead anyway. The question is --
It can't be the color of his skin only, because there are plenty of qualified black journalists out there.
Some information from the L.A. Times:
The least credible and complete portion of the Times' account is its categorical denial that the unusual tolerance and solicitude the paper accorded Blair, who is African American, had anything to do with his race. Like other major American news organizations, the Times has in recent years made strenuous efforts to compensate for the decades of discrimination that kept women and minority reporters out of their newsrooms. The New York Times, in particular, has had demonstrable difficulties recruiting and retaining black reporters and editors.
The Times report is candid about the severe criticisms directed at Blair by the two metropolitan editors — Joyce Purnick and Jonathan Landman — prior to his assignment to the paper's national staff. It is less forthcoming about the close mentor-protégé relationship that apparently existed between Blair and the Times' managing editor, Gerald Boyd, who also is African American. By the Times' account, Boyd was head of a committee that recommended Blair be hired, despite the reservations of other editors. Boyd, along with Raines, pushed the inexperienced reporter with a poor record onto the prestigious national staff.
What the Times does not note is that in 2001 it was the tyro Blair who nominated Boyd for the National Assn. of Black Journalists' journalist of the year award for his role in producing the Pulitzer Prize-winning series "How Race Is Lived in America." When Boyd subsequently was promoted to managing editor, according to sources at the Times, Blair was selected to write the announcement for the paper's in-house newsletter.