BLAIR: HOW NOT TO BE ME

KEITH J. KELLY

[jjm2111]

DISGRACED former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair has completed his first journalistic piece since the plagiarism and fabrication capers that caused his downfall at the Gray Lady came to light in early May. Blair has written a freelance piece for Jane magazine's "It Happened to Me" column: a first-person narrative about the affair that eventually forced the resignation of Blair and the paper's two top editors.

David Granger, the Esquire editor in chief, had earlier lined up a piece from Blair, but dropped him like a hot potato after a Media Ink story revealed that the Times exile had been hired to do a movie review of "Shattered Glass" - about the life and times of another disgraced journalist, Stephen Glass.

The review was supposed to run the November issue, but a firestorm of protests from the mag's journalistic purists convinced Granger to drop the idea and cancel the column. Granger said the assignment had lost the element of surprise when the news leaked prematurely.

Jane mag Editor-in-Chief Jane Pratt, always one to stir things up herself, does not appear likely to cave into any howls of protest on this one. She was unavailable, but a spokeswoman said, "We hope that readers will learn from other people's train wrecks and benefit from them. There's no endorsement of him of any kind."

Blair's article will appear in the October issue, which hits newsstands on Sept. 9.

He mentions some of the problems that led to his downfall and advises people not to do likewise. For instance? "If you take the company car from New York to Maryland for a personal trip, you might not want to get a speeding ticket and then throw it in the trash - only to have the business administrator discover it when a late notice arrives."

He also advises people to wait a few years and build up some good will before letting their eccentricities show: "I guess I could have done the fur-coat-Persian-head-wrap-Kermit-the-frog stunt after a couple more years."

[jjm2111]

Look at that tiny little man. Also, this is a perfect example of the "no publicity is bad publicitiy" mantra of our times. Also, Blair probably has to be one of the dumbest individuals on Earth. Did he think that ticket was going to just vanish once he threw it in the trash?

[sgtbono2002]

"It Happened to me " The title implies that his firing was something that just came along because he was there and not because of anything he did. Nothing happened to the man except his incompetence caught up with him.