ABSOLUTE DRIVEL

Tension, Anger at NYT Staff Meeting Over Handling of Reporter Blair (Howard Kurtz, May 15, 2003, Washington Post)

Asked by business reporter Alex Berenson if there were any circumstances under which he would consider quitting over the handling of Jayson Blair's serial fabrications, Raines said: "My plan is to have this job and perform it with every fiber in my body as long as this man next to me," Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., allowed it. At that point, Sulzberger declared: "If he were to offer his resignation, I would not accept it."

As recounted by numerous participants, some of whom took notes, the session, attended by more than 500 people at a movie theater near the West 43rd Street newsroom, was marked both by contrition on the part of the newspaper's top editors and angry exchanges in which they appeared testy and defensive.

Joe Sexton, a metropolitan desk editor, used a profanity in demanding to know how the paper could have sent Blair, a 27-year-old reporter with a checkered record, to cover the Washington sniper case. "You guys have lost the confidence of much of the newsroom," Sexton said.

Raines told Sexton sharply not to "demagogue me" or use curse words, saying the discussion should be more civil. But he also said: "I'm sorry I don't have your trust. I hope I can win it back." [...]

What little applause there was went to Metropolitan Editor Jonathan Landman, who wrote an e-mail in April 2002: "We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now." That memo went only to the associate managing editor for administration and the assistant to Managing Editor Gerald Boyd, Raines said, adding that he never saw it until after Blair's resignation. [...]

Boyd apologized for his mistakes but said it was "absolute drivel" to suggest that he had acted as a mentor to Blair, who, like the managing editor, is African American. "Did I pat him on the back? Did I say 'hang in there'? Yes, but I did that with everybody."

Blair had been cultivating Boyd, nominating him for a National Association of Black Journalists award and writing up the prize in an employee newsletter.

Boyd said he had had only two serious talks with Blair ? one after the Sept. 11 attacks, when Blair's behavior became more erratic, and again after Blair was accused of plagiarizing an article from the San Antonio Express-News, urging him to come clean.

"This is not about a failure of minority journalists," Boyd said, or about being "too compassionate. . . . Let's not make this about race or youth or anything that divides the most talented newsroom in the country and indeed the world."

Fair or not, one thing that this story does is insert a parenthetical in Mr. Boyd's name: (Quota Hire). That is but one of the tragedies of racial preferences, that they call into question the legitimate achievements of all memnbers of the group they are supposed to be helping. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 15, 2003 10:10 AM