I'm sort of astounded that Newsweek has decided to put Jayson Blair on its cover. He's the New York Times reporter who self-destructed in a maze of made-up and plagiarized stories, going as far as producing fake receipts to make it seem like he was on assignment around the country, when he was actually holed up at his filthy apartment in Brooklyn.
While this has been the talk of media circles, I doubt most Newsweek readers know or even care who Jayson Blair is-- and even if they do, not enough to warrant the front page. It's the media's self-importance that's fueling this. The industry loves nothing more than to write about itself.
Meanwhile, what bugs me the most is I get the feeling that Blair-- like Stephen Glass before him-- will find some sort of career boost out of all this. Oh, he'll never work again as a journalist per se, but he now has a literary agent and PR agent working new angles. It's enough to make you wonder why the rest of us play by the rules.
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