A Journalist's Hard Fall

Questions about Raines's management style--his penchant for giving preferential treatment to favored stars, his celebrated fondness for "flooding the zone" on big stories, severely stretching resources--weren't addressed at all. Indeed, more than one Times staffer pointed out that the paper's national staff would not have been in need of the services of an untested young reporter with a spotty track record had a number of veterans not been pushed out by Raines last year.

Of course, plagiarism, and even outright fraud, can occur at any news organization, and certainly the lion's share of the blame for this scandal should fall on Blair. As commentators have noted, the normal journalistic checks and balances are put in place with the assumption that everyone--reporters, editors and readers--shares an interest in getting to the truth. "The person who did this is Jayson Blair,'' Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in Sunday's story. "Let's not begin to demonize our executives.'' As the Times seeks to come to grips with how this could have happened, there is bound to be a lot more soul-searching in the months ahead.

© 2003