Lying Used to Be Harder: An editor stopped me from becoming Jayson Blair

I was as big a liar as Jayson Blair when I started out in the newspaper business. But I got caught early.

A week after of college graduation, I began working as a news aide at the Washington Post. I was to be Nina Hyde's assistant. She was the superb fashion editor at the Post Style section under editor-in-chief Ben Bradlee and the Style editor Shelby Coffey.

I lucked into meeting Nina just as I was finishing my studies at Georgetown and as her assistant was moving up to become a copy editor.

Nina told me my job would involve "schlepping shopping bags" because she organized a lot of fashion shoots and always had merchandise coming and going. She said she would need me to do some typing. "You can type?"

Now this wasn't a total lie because I had just finished four years of typing lengthy term papers on an extremely noisy electric Smith-Corona that shook the walls every time I hit the return key. It usually took me until about four in the morning to type ten pages — but I could type. I just couldn't type fast.

Nina, however, could type and she really sped along on her Washington Post Raytheon computer that seemed so mod in the early 80s. And she wrote all her own stuff so I figured, every once in a while, she'd ask me to type a letter or an expense report or something. That I could do.

The first time she asked me to type a little something, which was probably the second day on the job, I got my paper loaded in the IBM Selectric and started typing away — slowly. Nina was watching me with a look of horror on her face. I think I was typing even slower than usual because she was staring at me.

Instead of getting fired, or seeking appropriate counseling, I stayed at the Post and Nina forced me to learn how to type fast, in a hurry. She went on a European assignment to cover the shows in Milan, Paris, and London and took an early model of a laptop along with a funky phone attachment that would purportedly zap her stories right through the lines back to the Post. I thought I was on easy street until I found out that this new futuristic system rarely worked. Nina called to say, "My story won't transmit so I'll have to dictate it to you because I'm on deadline."

I sat at my computer and poised my fingers above the keyboard. "This week in Milan," she began, "tradition met cutting edge when Giorgio Armani showed his new fall couture line..."

This is what I typed: "This week in Milsn, raditione mer cutiing efge when Geoirdio aomani shwoeed hisfall foudtuire lnine."

I was doing more praying than typing — asking God if I could just somehow remember every word Nina was saying, I could type it later. Her voice sounded worried and exasperated at the same time. I know she was wondering how it was going to translate.

Meanwhile, Nina's editor ran out of her office and over to my desk and said, "Is that Nina's column? What is that? It's a mess. It's not even words."

Nina was still talking and I was trying to listen and find the keys and give the editor a reassuring look like, "No problem. I'll clean it up in a minute." I was visibly sweating.

Somehow, maybe it was the prayer, I knew what I meant when I typed that mess and fixed it up and called Nina back with a quick clarification or two and we made it into the paper for the next morning.

She ended up phoning in most of her stories for that trip. It was a long couple of weeks.

Next, Nina punished me with a transcript of a long interview with Karl Lagerfeld who speaks English with a German and French accent at the same time at hyper-speed and never draws a breath.

"Here," she said, "Transcribe this." I set that transcription pedal on the extremely slow setting to try to figure out what the designer was saying and had to replay each section several times. But that kind of worked with my typing.

From there, Nina constantly encouraged me to write my own pieces whenever the opportunity arose. I'll never forget my first feature. It was about clothes for dogs and the headline was "Dog Togs for Yuppie Puppies." I read it over someone's shoulder on the bus as I went to work and was proud to be a journalist.

— Susan Konig, author of the book Why Animals Sleep So Close to the Road and other lies I tell my children, is an NRO contributor.

I remembered my first job out of high school as a garbage man. I might have to drive the truck sometimes if they were shorthanded they mentioned. I didn't have a drivers license or for that matter know how to drive...No one asked if I had a license or if I could drive, they just assumed I could. They did ask if I could drive a stick and I said, SURE.

I survived, but the time I had to back up a narrow lane caused a co-worker to get a bad case of the squirms and he mumbled out loud what a bozo I was as I repeatedly ground the gears and popped the clutch.

I was as big a liar as Jayson Blair when I started out in the newspaper business.

Not according to this account. This author didn't invent stories from places she never visited, nor plagiarized others' work.

Overstating her typing skills is a mere white lie compared to what Blair pulled off for four years.

Overstating her typing skills is a mere white lie compared to what Blair pulled off for four years.

Besides, she could have just stuffed coke up her nose and typed like crazy...

it would have been unintelligible, but hell, it would have been fast...

Some people have bemoaned the fact that Blair's behavior besmirches all black reporters, makes them lose credibility, causes people to question their qualifications, and the like. I don't necessarily disagree. If I were a black reporter, I'm sure I'd wonder whether people were looking at me and thinking "just another affirmative action hire."

However, we non-black newspaper reporters feel a bit of the sting, too. So many people, especially here, figure the Blair incident simply proves what they all knew, that all reporters are lying, unprincipled, biased jerks. For what it's worth, I'll refute that generalization. In everything I write, I diligently try to be accurate, concise and clear. Most, if not all, of my colleagues do the same.

Back in the late 70's, I worked fixing copiers - I was the only woman on the team, and one place I went to fix the copier at called my manager and said they did not want some affirmative-action girl working on their machine.

He tried to reassure them that I was competent and had been hired in spite of being female, not because of it, but they were adamant. He told them that they would have to wait until one of the men finished all his calls and all his paperwork for his own territory before he would be able to come into my territory to service them.

He made them wait a whole week, though they called every day. Every day he reminded them that they had had a technician on site & refused service.

So many people, especially here, figure the Blair incident simply proves what they all knew, that all reporters are lying, unprincipled, biased jerks. For what it's worth, I'll refute that generalization. In everything I write, I diligently try to be accurate, concise and clear. Most, if not all, of my colleagues do the same.

I don't doubt any of what you say. In fact, an author of one of the many articles about Blair stated that he/she was surprised at the lack of outrage about the lies Blair told in his Jessica Lynch piece. "The reaction to Blair's fabricated piece was, 'Well, what do you expect?'"

You'll have read by now that Blair is mouthing off in his own defense -- bragging that his lies in the Lynch piece were his "favorite."

I disagree with most of what NYT editor Jonathan Landsman believes, but I have to give him credit for recognizing and at least taking a written stand against Blair a year ago.

I think it's incumbent for principled news publications to continue to rail against BOTH Blair and the NYT in their editorial pages.

And that's the really sad part is that all reporters are besmirched by dishonest reporters behavior. I have friends who are reporters, and who are honest and principled in their writings (and so are you.) However, now that I read anything from the New York Times, I don't believe it, unless I have heard it from another source.

The SL Tribune fired two reporters a couple of months ago for selling a lie to the National Enquirer, their editor put them on probation for a year (!), and then fired them when he found out they had lied to him too about their behavior. He resigned a couple of days later after it became apparent that the newsroom was in revolt, and he didn't have the confidence of his reporters. The NY Times needs to clean house and enforce the standard rules of journalism.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.