An American Reporter...

"Fiction is a bridge to the truth
that journalism can't reach..."
- Gonzo Journalist Hunter Thompson

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

AUSTIN, Texas - Page C5 of today's Arts Section in The New York Times carries a story about one of the newspaper's former staff writers, a young man who seemed to be headed for great success in Journalism. That young man was Jayson Blair, shown in photo above.

Blair brought creativity and perfect quotes to his stories, and editors often noted his rapid advancement in the business. He had arrived as a college intern and later earned a full-time job, receiving choice assignments that had him out of the newsroom on stories that got good play on the pages of The Times. He was fast and he was getting the story. Or so thought his editors.

But young Blair's rising star fell in 2003, when editors began getting info that not all was right with Blair's stories. Sources were saying they had not said the things Blair said they'd said in his articles. Others said they had been interviewed by telephone and that Blair had not visited towns listed on his dateline stories. In short order, he was out, fired for making up stories and creating quotes. It's a rarity in Big Time news reporting, but it happens.

One of my former colleagues at The Boston Globe lost a choice position for doing the same thing that cost Blair his job. Mike Barnicle was his name. You may have seen him as a guest analyst on MSNBC's Morning Joe Show. Barnicle resigned from The Globe in the late-1980s, after checks of his columns revealed the heart-tugging stories he wrote were fake. Incidents that came to light in the various neighborhoods related to crime, rapes, shootings and knifings always drew Barnicle to the scene. He would then offer fantastic columns that almost jumped off the page. But editors who tired of hearing rumors that Barnicle made things up went on a hunt for confirmation. They got it. When asked to reveal sources, Barnicle could not offer real names, addresses or telephone numbers. He resigned when facing a firing.

News reporting remains one of those needed pillars of American society. An unbridled press is part and parcel of our manner as a freedom-loving people. It is for good reason that the press is generally considered government's Fourth Estate, there alongside the Executive, Judicial and Legislative branches. When it works, it makes life better for the whole. When it doesn't, it erodes certain hallowed ground.

I mention Jayson Blair for good reason. The article about him in today's Times editions is about a new off-Broadway play to do with his days as a Times reporter. Titled "CQ/CX," it is now showing at the Signature Theater Company's Peter Norton Space on 42nd Street in Manhattan. CQ/CX are editing symbols, meaning some fact in an article has been checked and found factual (CQ) or has been checked and found to be false (CX).

In its contrite apology to readers, The Times described Blair's fabricated contributions as "a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper." Blair eventually wrote a book about his days at The Times in which he neither expressed regret nor assigned blame for his plagiarism. Unlike Barnicle, who is White, Blair, who is Black, did not find the media sympathetic enough to give him a second chance. History needs a context for everything, so perhaps Blair's fall from the highest of Journalism grace is that a theatre troupe found enough in his dastardly tale to throw it onstage.

Reporting is no great shakes. College training teaches you the basics and those low-paying jobs during the early years of a reporter's career allow for rookie mistakes. There is a reason why the Big City newspapers won't hire you with less than 5 years of daily experience.

Jayson Blair was an incubated reporter at The Times. He had started out as an energetic unpaid intern, struggled as a staff writer when eventually hired and then risen like a rocket when editors saw a future in his work. Awe and envy in the newsroom segued into anger and hate, with most Times writers wondering why senior editors hadn't seen the signs that showed Blair's work was simply to clean and too good.

You'd have to know the Big Time newsroom. You'd have to know that it's another world when the reporter next to you is as good as you are, if not better, when your Front Page story that looks as if it's the best one for the entire year is then followed by an equally spectacular one the next day, written by someone else.

The competition is fierce and inspiring, but it, too, is humbling...

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