May 13, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:So -- Jayson Blair. Indictment of affirmative action, or no?
First of all, though I'm not a fan of AA, I think that Jayson Blair could easily be an indictment of affirmative action as it was practiced at the Times, without being an indictment of the practice in general.
Second of all, I really don't buy the idea that because they used racial preferences in hiring, which they pretty clearly did, the Times somehow let themselves in for this. Anyone who's ever done hiring knows that a stellar resume and a good interview are no guarantee of competency; conversely, one of the best guys I ever worked with had been a porter before he went into technology. There are no perfect metrics. And even if they'd hired someone with ludicrously substandard qualifications, it does not therefore follow, as night to day, that the guy was going to be a plagiarising, expense-account abusing liar. Any more than a glossy set of credentials would ensure that he wasn't any of those things.
Third of all, it seems clear to me that there was more than one pathology here. Jayson Blair was the Boss's Favorite. He smoked with the Managing Editor. Anyone who's worked at a corporation run by someone of Howell Raines' apparently dubious managerial talents knows that you don't have to throw race into the mix in order to get some ugly results.
Fourth of all, it's not really all that usual to check things like graduation as (again) anyone who's ever had hiring power can attest. I've come across more than one resume of someone who clearly hadn't been at the institution they claimed (one of them claimed to have been at school with me, but didn't remember a single major incident from the four years, and couldn't tell me where Smokey Joe's was.) Hell, I went to college with a guy who hadn't graduated from high school -- he'd been expelled second semester of his senior year, but his school hadn't informed Penn. It is more than most of us can manage to telephone ten or twenty educational institutions, and a hundred former employers, to verify that our final applicants were there.
Nonetheless, it seems possible, even likely, that race was a factor. From what I can tell, every editor he worked with thought he was incompetent, yet he was repeatedly promoted, which is definitely unusual in the corporations I've worked for -- usually, they wait for you to improve before they give you more responsibility. I mean, I've worked in plenty of places where people whose co-workers thought they were incompetent got promoted, but usually if your manager was urging that you be fired, your future with the firm was fairly limited. Moreover, reading between the employees of the Times seem to pretty much be saying that, yes, Jayson was off-limits because he was black. That seems to me to be a corruption of the ideals of affirmative action: blacks aren't being given an opportunity to excel; they're ornamental conscience-salvers pretending to do real work just like white folks, but just like the kids who show up on Take Our Daughters to Work Day, we donn't expect them to actually do a good job. But frowning on that sort of affirmative action is not an automatic condemnation of hiring preferences.
Defenders of the Times aren't really doing the paper any favors when they claim that it wasn't affirmative action. If it was affirmative action, it was a misguided implementation of possibly misplaced ideals, with limited overall effect. If it wasn't, their repeated refusal to even investigate gross abuses betrays a lack of interest in truth or accuracy that calls into question our ability to believe anything written in the paper. How many other untouchables are still writing for them?
Posted by Jane Galt at May 13, 2003 6:06 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links“Defenders of the Times aren't really doing the paper any favors when they claim that it wasn't affirmative action.”
The New York Times is even lowering its credibility further by denying the obvious. Everybody with half a brain knows that Jayson Blair was a beneficiary of radical egalitarian affirmative action policies. Sadly, the top executives of the New York Times are so delusional they are virtually incapable of telling the truth. Should we give them credit for their front page admission of Mr. Blair’s vile shenanigans? Hell no! This was probably a preemptive attempt at damage control.
I am actually a strong believer in affirmative action. However, I’ve always stipulated that the minority candidate must must be equal in talent to their majority competitor. Needless to add, my premise has been soundly rejected by most advocates of these remedial actions.
The NYT has a long record of demanding
accountability from every organization on
Earth except itself.
I'm a long time and increasingly conservative subscriber to the Times. I think Jason Blair is a symptom of a general trend at the Times where they overlook uncomfortable facts in order to maintain and push their very liberal ideology. This was very evident in the way they skewed the news in the runup to the war in Iraq and the early coverage. The editorial page has been pushed onto the front page and into the news columns. I think we're going to see a melt down of management soon. You can't be so at odds with reality in a business that requires an unvarnished presentation of the truth, at least on the front page. Mediocrities like Dowd and Krugman who's only thought is to blame GW for all the world's troubles are a different problem. At least they're published as opinion.
I would separate Krugman from Dowd. While I rarely agree with him these days, he's an articulate and informed voice, who talks about actual issues. Every time I read a Dowd column, though (which is getting rare), my first thought is: "Why is Liz Smith writing for the NYT op-ed page?"
The real question in the Blair case isn't why he was hired, it was why he was retained despite all the apparent concerns about his work in 2002.
Race may also have played a factor here, but sucking up to Boyd and Raines probably also was a key factor, and that's not just by getting in good with the top guys through office politics, but also given Howell what he wanted in his concocted stories.
Look at the story that was considered the most consequential fabrication -- the allegation that federal prosecutors had interruped Muhammad's impending confession in the D.C. sniper case. The article inferred that this was ordered by people higher-up than just a mere federal prosecutor; somehow, word had come down (from Ashcroft or the White House) to shut the confession down. Very conpsirtorial -- but given the paranoia apparent in some of the Times' op-ed columnists like Krugman and Dowd, there's no doubt some of those beliefs are in the hearts of others in the Times hierarchy, and a story like the one Blair submitted would fit right into that ideology.
Blair had to know that making up stories to make those people Raines dislikes look bad would make him look good in the eyes of the top brass on 43rd Street -- they wanted "gotcha" stories on the Bush Administration, and he tried to give them one. The question right now is whether or not Jayson was the lone problem at the Times, or if other reporters did the same thing, and if they falsified their stories in order to make Raines' political foes look bad and by doing so, improve their status at the paper.
Times is not off the hook. Perhaps, it's the liberal guilt that passed on this Blair character? It's not pigment. It's the thrill of someone in power who really likes to turn the screws on everybody. So that if you look at the environment you'll see the egg shells.
Blair was held up JUST TO MAKE EVERYONE ELSE feel bad. So, where's that written into AA dogma?
If Howell survives as an executive then the whole paper should just fold. This isn't a lonely reporter's fault. Any more than it's the fault of a TV telepromter reader. WHEN YOU SEE THEM YOU MUST ASK, WHO DOES THIS GUY OR GAL HAVE TO BLOW TO GET AHEAD?
No one's figured out that REAL Management SKILLS count. The whole thing's a joke. And, Blair got suckered into this. He didn't think at all. He just 'behaved' like a TROPHY. Sad. And, sad for all humans who get ahead without talent. It's hard to stay on top when the fix is in. Wasn't this whole thing just a matter of time?
Firing someone is an exercise in power -- something very few people actually really have because it is obscured by fear (no matter what their title). Forgot the bull about AA, this is a simple case of external expectations (NY Times is an efficient business) not meshing with internal realities (NY Times is just like any other business: mostly inept).
forgot = forget...whoops...what was that about ineptitude? :)
I think this is a case of multiple interacting prejudices standing in the way of truth.
As we say in engineering "it is not a single point failure".
Any way I wonder if the NYT will sell more papers during the scandal? Ain't a free press wonderful!!!
I think this case is a sad indictment of the diversity crowd. It's hard to escape the suspicion that The Times felt so much pressure to present young black journalists to the public and their competitors that they overlooked everything else to get Blair where they needed him: on the front page.
I read the mea culpa article, and the contradictions between actions and words are stark. The Times repeatedly claims that race wasn't the issue, that Blair was promoted on merit. Anyone decrying the AA/diversity criticism is implicitly making the same argument.
But if you re-read looking for any example of said excellence you can't find one. There are references to positive performances by several peeople, but actual accomplishments are not described once. Isn't that odd? Not one concrete example of a positive accomplishment was noted in a 7,000 word analysis of his tenure.
Instead, what you discover is that he was consistently judged marginal or worse. He's been on probation, he's taken two leaves, he's been reprimanded for sloppy work. His direct manager wrote a memo saying (from memory) "We have to stop him from writing for the Times. Right now." I don't know how you read this but I can't think of a more damning condemnation.
This isn't all that surprising considering the diversity mania these days. Given the need for examples of diversity to parade around at institutional meetings I suspect it's quite common, although much lesser in degree. What's shocking is that it occurred at the Times. I would think the Times could skim the cream of the crop from any demographic it wanted. Why was Blair of all people chosen?
I understand he was noted as "charming", but come on. Does this explain all of the above? If charm overcomes this level of incompetence I can't see how the NYT functions. I suspect that Raines et al gave Blair chance after chance because he was their annointed poster boy for diversity. They had too much invested in it to take appropriate action so they sat on their hands and hoped for the best.
I suppose other explanations could be made. Buy I haven't heard it yet from a lot of people trying.
>>Fourth of all, it's not really all that usual to check things like graduation as (again) anyone who's ever had hiring power can attest.
Um. In the tech industry, we check all of that. When I had hire authority, any finalist for employment was vetted by HR: all previous employers contacted, references verified, degrees checked with universities.
On AA: In my training for management, I was told that it was a violation of federal law to use race, gender or veteran status except as a tie breaker. AA means you try to find minority candidates, let them know that the jobs are available. In our case, job openings were circulated to historically black colleges, to local civic groups that help minorities, etc. That kind of AA is one that I can accept as a reasonable redress for past problems.
What is interesting is that I have had managers in the Federal Civil Service tell me that they were under extreme pressure to hire minorities, even to the extent of HR letting on that there were quotas in effect or freezes on hiring white males for certain job classifications.
Maybe. But Steven Glass apparently did similar things at TNR and he is as white as can be... Don't know about the Steven Glass case? Well, one advantage to being white is that they don't make such a big fuss about these kinds of things.
I'm told Glass is even writing a book about his experience. My bet is that his book will become a best seller, while Blair will never be heard from again.
Yes, I'm sure its hell on earth being white...
"one advantage to being white is that they don't make such a big fuss about these kinds of things"
On the other hand of course, whites are all racists culpable for slavery. So it's give and take.
"one advantage to being white is that they don't make such a big fuss about these kinds of things"
On the other hand of course, whites are all racists culpable for slavery. So it's give and take.
Shuan Rose:
Maybe. But Steven Glass apparently did similar things at TNR and he is as white as can be... Don't know about the Steven Glass case? Well, one advantage to being white is that they don't make such a big fuss about these kinds of things.
If the Stephen (not "Steven") Glass case has gotten less attention than the Jayson Blair case, it might possibly have something to do with the fact that The New Republic is a weekly political magazine with a circulation of about 100,000, while the New York Times is the leading US daily newspaper, with a print circulation well over a million and a website that's probably accessed as frequently as anything short of Ebay.
That said, many news stories about Blair have explicitly compared him with Glass.
Glass has written an autobiographical novel. I don't know whether it will sell or not. (Though say what you will of the scoundrel, he can write.) Nothing prevents Blair from doing the same. If he has half the talent he's been credited with, it would be well worth reading. Certainly he seems to have hung around with the upper ranks of the NYT management enough to tell some fascinating tales. Not that we could, er, necessarily trust them . . .
Maybe. But Steven Glass apparently did similar things at TNR and he is as white as can be... Don't know about the Steven Glass case? Well, one advantage to being white is that they don't make such a big fuss about these kinds of things.
The Glass case has been brought up many times in the past week in relation to the Blair case. The difference is when The New Republic found out about the fabricaations, they didn't pat Steve on the head, send him off for some counseling and then allow him back on staff four months later -- they canned him as soon as the stories came to light.
The Blair case is equal to the Glass case only up until the Spring of 2002. At that point, the Times knew they had a problem with Jayson, but refused to deal with it the way TNR did with Glass. It's the paper's inaction over the past year and its seeming inability to rationally explain why it took no action that has gotten it into so much hot water.
Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair are both in the same 'tub.' As they say, "when one door closes another one opens." I read the Fabulist and loved it. I do imagine when we take from our life's experiences, it makes for a good read, if written well. We all make mistakes some bigger than others and some even more sensational! Live and let live and just hope we can make up for some of this bad Karma that is likely to come around.
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