[Liz]

(Boston Globe supervisors) told (Blair) of complaints about his zeal for spreading gossip and interrogating colleagues about their assignments. Other interns had accused him of poaching ideas from them and elbowing them aside for choice assignments. Overall, the consensus was that Blair perpetually had ''his nose in other people's business,'' in Williams's words. Doubly irksome to the two supervisors was the fact that some of the same complaints had surfaced during Blair's internship in the Globe's Washington bureau the previous summer. They reminded him of that, and forcefully told him it could not continue. At that point, Blair burst into tears. He promised he would change his behavior. But in the following weeks, he remained a polarizing figure among the interns working for the Globe's Metro section. The supervisors had to call him in again to discuss the same issues.

Jayson's writing the wrong book. He should pen a tome about how to get ahead even if you're a first-class schnook.

[Fracas]

After transferring from Liberty University, a Christian college in Lynchburg, Va., founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell

Any day we'll see the NYT and Chris Matthews blame Blair's problems on Jerry Falwell. OTOH, I cannot comprehend the culture shock between Falwell's college and the University of MD!

[Wonder Warthog]

"...and Thomas Blair, an inspector general at the Smithsonian Institution."

I wonder if this is part of the reason that the Smithsonian has been having so many problems of late.

[Diogenesis]

The bottom line is that his plagiarism was A=OK to the Boston Globe.

[Savage Beast]

"he boasted of his shenanigans at the Times, saying he 'fooled some of the most brilliant people in journalism.'"

So-called "journalists" of the American "mainstream newsmedia" are saddened, deeply saddened by this incident.

The wary public sees all these people as a bunch of mendacious, self-deluding slobs serving a big "Liberal"/Democrat propaganda machine.

So-called "journalists", dazzled by themselves, atop their perches of self-righteousness and self-congratulation, are blind to the obvious similarities between themselves and Jayson Blair.

One difference however--"journalists" generally don't boast of their shenanigans.

[Libloather]

"Of course I knew it was wrong. There is no reason to lie now."

The perp is going to write a book about this garbage? Can't wait...

[martin_fierro]

[razorback-bert]

Everyone states Jayson was bright, smart, and intellgent, so how did the brightest, smartest and most intellgent, let a shlemil in their little club?

[Incorrigible]

A whole long article like this and not one mention of Howell Raines?

Just a continuation of the Times party line.  Jayson did what he did all by himself.  No enablers.

Bogus!

[Lancey Howard]

After the scandal broke at the Times, Blair says he checked himself into Silver Hill, a psychiatric hospital in New Canaan, Conn., where he was treated for alcoholism, cocaine abuse, and manic depression.

I hope the New York Times is forced to rehire and pay restitution to Blair for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. PLEASE let it happen. HEY JASON!....SUE THE OLD GRAY WHORE!!!

[Tall_Texan]

What amazes me is that all the negative traits that are spoken about Blair in these stories are the exact qualities everyone *outside* the press uses to describe members of the press. "Cocky", "Nosy" "Would go through a brick wall to get a story", "Spread rumors", "stole story ideas", "inaccuracies", "invented quotes". Jayson sounds like the whole freaking lot of them if you ask me - only maybe a smidge more so. And I used to work in the business so I should know.

What's fascinating is how offended journalists get when someone else is being the cocky, nosy, arrogant, rumor-monger who invents things and gets their facts wrong about them.

When it hits *their* lives and livelihoods, they get just as defensive and upset as you or I, even though they pull this crap on the rest of us all the time in pursuit of the "story".

I have a friend who was the focus of a national news story last summer. Major League Baseball was threatening some fan websites that had used the pictures and logos of Major League teams.

My friend was interviewed by a dozen or so media outlets and quoted in stories about the situation. Some of the stories included "quotes" attributed to him which were verbatims from the website, not quotes from himself (they were not written in a way one who answer a question - they were statements that were informative for visitors to a website. Then the misquotes would be picked up and re-written into other writer's stories, further distorting what he meant to say.

It took him about six times of being misquoted or misrepresented before he learned there were certain parts to the story that he just wasn't going to comment about or speculate on. His "15 minutes of fame" were quite an education about American journalism.

[Timesink]

Schadenfreude

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