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"But the thing that shocked me was the reaction of people when they read about [themselves] in the New York Times and knew it to be false. Their reaction seemed to be a kind of shrug - 'What do you expect?'" Not one person whom Blair claimed falsely to have interviewed contacted the paper to point it out...."

That leaped out from the page to me, also. I have some questions:

1. How do we KNOW that no one contacted the Times? If there were so many corrections, SOMEONE contacted the Times, didn't they? This sounds like another lie to me.

2. Some people probably didn't contact the Times because (here's a surprise, Howell) THEY DON'T READ IT! THEY DIDN'T KNOW!!

3. Why are we taking the word of this professor, who wrote a suck up book on the paper and used to work for them? He is probably no better than Blair!

As an addendum to these comments, I would like to know what the errors Apple, Clymer, and others had to correct. I bet they were whoppers as well. I have not forgotten their articles on the tax cut (made up of whole cloth), their TWICE saying Henry Kissinger opposed the war in Iraq (he didn't) and other travesties of supposed reporting.

I think the entire paper has the accuracy of Maureen Dowd's column.

From the Corner at NRO:
Melissa Block, a host of the National Public Radio program “All Things Considered,” interviewed Times executive editor Howell Raines on the Blair fiasco--and challenged Raines with a rather incriminating blast from Raines’ past:

“Mr. Raines, you spoke to a convention of the National Association of Black Journalists in 2001, and you specifically mentioned Jayson Blair as an example of the Times spotting and hiring the best and brightest reporters on their way up. You said, 'This campaign has made our staff better and, more importantly, more diverse.' And I wonder now, looking back, if you see this as something of a cautionary tale, that maybe Jayson Blair was given less scrutiny or more of a pass on the corrections to his stories that you had to print because the paper had an interest in cultivating a young, black reporter.”

Raines’ defensive reply: “No, I do not see it as illustrating that point. I see it as illustrating a tragedy for Jayson Blair, that here was a person who under the conditions in which other journalists perform adequately decided to fabricate information and mislead colleagues. And it is--you know, I don't want to demonize Jayson, but this is a tragedy of failure on his part.”