The Jayson Blair Story

Jayson Blair began his tenure at the prestigious "New York Times" with a spotty record. A journalism major at the University of Maryland and the editor of the student paper, "The Diamondback," Blair was known for his constant errors. The first time he came under fire for his work was during his campaign as an editor in college. He was accused, on four different occasions, of plagiarizing and fraud. Each letter written by his staff at "the Diamondback" went unnoticed by the board that published the paper.

After his false graduation (Blair never did receive his degree), this reporter began a journalist's dream. During his four years at the "Times," he wrote over 600 stories, intensively covering the Beltway sniper attacks in his home state of Maryland and the Iraq War. The intensity and severity of his errors grew with each story, but Blair was assigned to new and interesting topics day in and day out by his suspecting editors.

The story that ruined his dream was one totally plagiarized off a former colleague based in Texas. Macarena Hernandez, a reporter for the "San Antonio Express-News", put in a call to her former paper, stating the similarities between her story and Blair's story. After being unable to prove he had conducted the interviews and written the story, Blair resigned from the "Times" after four long years of plagiarizing and fraud.

An investigation was started after Jayson Blair's resignation. The results of this investigation sound a little bit like this; approximately 36 of the 73 nationally published stories authored by Blair were contaminated with either fabrication and were plagiarized from another source.

The paper, although wary of the situation, moved on. "The New York Times" published an apologetic and explanatory piece containing the story of reporter Jayson Blair's misdeeds.