Thread: Disgraced NYT Reporter Blames It on Eccentricity

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...4.htm&sc=rontz

By Ellen Wulfhorst

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jayson Blair, the discredited reporter who sparked a plagiarism scandal at The New York Times that caused its top editors to resign, has finally explained himself, blaming his missteps on eccentricity and junk food.

Writing in a light, almost flippant tone for Jane magazine, aimed at young women, Blair offers a half dozen reasons why he left "in a ball of flames" after fabricating and plagiarizing dozens of articles during nearly four years at the nation's most influential newspaper.

Blair writes that he "kissed *ss," "flaunted the rules," "avoided professional help" and "had something to prove ... as a black person in a mainly white newsroom."

Following his resignation in May, The Times published a detailed, 14,000-word account of his fabrications.


The scandal prompted a wave of soul-searching and self-criticism at the newspaper, where critics felt Blair was promoted to help diversify the newsroom despite warnings about his work, and staff were unhappy with the management style of then-Executive Editor Howell Raines.


Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd then resigned.


Saying he "didn't hide my crazy side," Blair writes in Jane that it might have been "going too far" when he showed up one day wearing a huge fur coat with a Persian head wrap and Kermit the Frog on his head. "Apparently, my eating habits also helped sabotage my career," Blair says.


"One supervisor summed it up in the Times story: 'I told him that he needed a different way to nourish himself than drinking scotch, smoking cigarettes and buying Cheez Doodles from the vending machines.' But, for the record, it was Doritos and fried mozzarella sticks, not Cheez Doodles."


With little remorse, except to say his deceptions were unpleasant for his mother when they were published in The Times on Mothers Day, Blair even takes a swipe at the newspaper, saying: "If your newspaper asked you to report by phone and write a story from New York and then drive to New Jersey to get a dateline just to make it look like all the work was done there, perhaps they have gone too far."


Blair has given interviews since leaving the newspaper but the Jane article is his first published piece. The magazine would not say how much he was paid.


The magazine fact-checked the article "meticulously," said Andrea Kaplan, vice president of corporate communications for Fairchild Publications Inc., which publishes Jane.


The article will appear in Jane's October issue, on newsstands Sept. 9.



09/03/03 16:18



{{{ Yeah; the Doritos made him do it ... }}