[fightinJAG]

"Recurring personal issues" and "eratic behavior" sounds like there's more to this story.

[Salman]

While the Times probably considered race in its hiring decision, I don't believe that in a town the size of New York City there was not one competent black person willing to work for the Times.

There's more here, but I'm not sure what.

[chainsaw]

Blair is black, Rivera is white. Rivera is still employed. Blair is not. Both should be unemployed.

[Dante3]

IMHO there is an incredible amount of incompetence at the NY Times. It is an overrated paper. Who knows how many other stories by black and white have been fabricated -- only the reporters were not this stupid and this lazy.

NY Times has an agenda and hires largely on that basis just as in the old Soviet Union.

[aristeides]

Some interesting paragraphs from the L.A. Times story, A sweeping journalistic mea culpa:

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.

[randita]

I want to read an investigative report about how the NY Times handled other reporters with similar problems in the past.

Were reporters with a similiar record of sloppiness given the same level of courtesy and additional chances as Blair received? Knowing that history would go a long way toward determining if Blair received preferential treatment merely because of his race.

I think the Times is being very tight-lipped about this because they are afraid of reverse discrimination lawsuits. There have to be former Times reporters out there who have been canned for far, far less than what was tolerated from Blair.