Wednesday, January 27, 2010

NYT's Gerald Boyd, In Memoir, Reveals That Reporter Jayson Blair "Spied On Colleagues" For NY Observer Media Reporter Sridhar Pappu.

In his posthumous memoir coming out next week, former NYT managing editor Gerald Boyd reveals that disgraced NYT reporter Jayson Blair "spied on colleagues" and regularly provided inside NYT information to the New York Observer.

Boyd says that he and then-executive editor Howell Raines discovered, in the wake of Blair's resignation, a "string of emails" between Blair and the Observer's "Off The Record" columnist, Sridhar Pappu, in which Blair regularly helped the reporter with stories on the NYT -- for a period of eight months before Blair quit the NYT amid widespread charges of plagiarism and fabrication of stories.

The emails "revealed a friendly relationship between the two," Boyd wrote .

Blair's resignation led to the eventual dismissal of both Boyd and Raines from the NYT, an episode recounted in depressing detail in Boyd's book, "My Times: In Black and White," set for publication next Monday and obtained by The NYTPicker. The Observer's John Koblin has already reported on other revelations in the book, including Boyd's harsh characterization of NYT culture editor Jonathan Landman, who then led the metro desk, as lacking "decency and integrity."

The depiction of the Blair-Pappu connection is especially interesting in light of the fact that, shortly after the news of his transgressions broke, Blair gave his first post-resignation interview to Pappu and the Observer -- a huge scoop at the time. ("So Jayson Blair could live, the journalist had to die," Blair famously told Pappu in a conversation held in Blair's apartment.)

According to Boyd, Blair had begun leaking information to Pappu in August 2002 about "staffing decisions, newsroom strategies, and disputes," in reply to Pappu's regular email questions.

Boyd was particularly incensed over the fact that Blair had leaked a list to Pappu of all the NYT reporters who had been assigned to the paper's Iraq coverage -- "including," Boyd said, "names, locations, phone numbers, dates they were to travel, and other comments."

"The information was confidential and competitive," Boyd fumed, "and its release was potentially life-threatening."

Boyd said he felt "deeply betrayed" by Blair's role as a newsroom source. He added that Raines had considered sharing the information about Blair's spying with the team of reporters assigned to investigate Blair's behavior for the paper. Raines told Boyd he would "discuss the possibility" of revealing the emails' contents with NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

But it wasn't clear to Boyd whether, in the end, Raines ever did anything with the information.

Reached for comment this afternoon on Boyd's account, Blair told The NYTPicker via email: "There's nothing in there that I'd disagree with."

Pappu responded to Boyd's claims this afternoon by noting that Blair was "just one of many sources I would speak to" at the NYT on regular basis.

"Any information [Blair] or anyone else gave me was then double or triple sourced before I put it in the column," Pappu told The NYTPicker via email. "I would say my relationship with him was as cordial as anyone I spoke to on the beat. I never knew Jayson personally and I never met him until our sitdown interview in 2003."

Since leaving the Observer, Pappu has written for the Atlantic Monthly and the Washington Post. Blair recently revealed that he has become a "certified life coach" in Ashburn, Virginia.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

The fundamental question is how Blair, as a low-level reporter, knew all that information. Until that is answered, a lot of people remain under a cloud.

Anonymous said...

While I appreciate the danger posed by too many people knowing locations and travel details of the Iraq reporting staff, I must say that Boyd's complaint about Blair being a source seems an awful lot like a double standard to me. Inside sources and leaked info are fine when they're coming *into* the NYT newsroom, but heaven forbid someone do some reporting on The Reporters.

Turnabout is fair play, my (posthumous) good sir. No one, not even the precious New York Times, is exempt.

Jonathan said...

Knew all that information? I doubt it would be terribly difficult for an employee to find out that information if they wanted. That's not a key question.

Anonymous said...

Yeah but the point is that Blair is a scumbag through and through. He wasn't just plagiarizing and fabricating, he was leaking confidential material. I think the word for him in the end would be "sociopath," although I'm sure Blair would offer an argument based on addiction, depression, etc. and say he was the real victim.

Anonymous said...

He wasn't a "low-level" reporter either. He was pretty high profile. Definitely on page one numerous times during that period.

And regarding the double standard. Give me a break. It is not a double standard. That makes no sense. Boyd had every right to not be happy about it. That was secret info. Just because reporters use anonymous sources has no bearing.

Anonymous said...

I've always been amazed how the media love to shine light into the workings of an organization and corporation but at the same time refuse to reveal anything about themselves.

Anonymous said...

"The information was confidential and competitive," Boyd fumed, "and its release was potentially life-threatening."

Kind of funny to hear this from a journalist.

Anonymous said...

I know for a fact that Jayson Blair also tried to spy on his competitors. When he was visiting One Police Plaza, he was caught trying to break into the computer of a Newsday reporter.

He had his finger on the pulse of everything that was going on at the Times. He was a huge gossip.

Anonymous said...

Sadly, Boyd wanted it both ways. Jonathan Landman was the guy who kept trying to get the Times to see what a liability Jayson Blair was. It was Boyd's rabbi, Howell Raines, who hung on to Blair. So if Raines was angry at finding that Blair had tattled to the Observer and didn't tell Sulzberger, it's because it would have reflected badly on his choice not to fire the guy.

Anonymous said...

A "certified life coach"? Well, he's certainly certifiable ...

Anonymous said...

The larger truth about Blair is he was the "Frankenstein monster" created by mandarins at the NYT. They have a long history of carefully screening their black applicants for reporting jobs--a policy that ultimately bit them where it hurts. Talk about Divine Retribution.

Anonymous said...

"Certified life coach." LOL. Just confirms my view that people who become "life coaches" are folks who couldn't make it anywhere else, or can't find a job. Oy..hope no one wastes their money with this guy.

Anonymous said...

It's amazing to me that someone incapable of managing his own life hires himself out to advise people on how to run theirs. It's not like we don't have vast public evidence that he's a proverbial hot mess, so I wonder who in their right mind would hire him? Maybe that's the answer - no one in their right mind would. And sadly, that still leaves a huge pool of potential clientele for him. He'll probably sell his customer's secrets to their enemies to exploit.

Anonymous said...

I could give Jayson Blair some coaching about what to do with his life.

Anonymous said...

The real sad fact of the matter is that untold numbers of aspiring Black journalists had their careers sidetracked, if not scuttled entirely, by simple guilt by association (skin color, yeah I said it) to Blair.
I can think in particular of one of the rare blacks in a high major daily management post who reacted to Blair fiasco as if the last thing he'd ever let happen is to become the "next Boyd". Even if it meant abandoning his inherent duty to "mentor" in any way.
What a shameful coward and disgrace to his race.

Anonymous said...

This information should put to rest the false accusation that Gerald Boyd coddled Jayson Blair because they're both black. Blair's actions disguted Boyd as much as anyone, according to this account. Boyd had a reputation among black journalists as a stifling Times gatekeeper who deflated the hopes of an untold number of minorities who sought work there. How he missed the sociopathic Blair is anyone's guess.

Anjii said...

Is it Iran or Iraq? (says Iraw)

Anonymous said...

Re: "He was pretty high profile. Definitely on page one numerous times during that period."

Page one does not signify that much any more. Plenty of junior reporters are published there. That is just one more of the sad declines of the paper.

Anonymous said...

Pappu wasn't the only one Blair shared info with. On the phone he'd read editors' emails and private memos to my husband (also--and still--a nyt reporter), who loved it.
Blair's behavior in those days was appalling, but that's what serious mental illness combined with addiction combined with being surrounded by enablers, both aware and unaware, is almost guaranteed to bring out. While he can never right his wrongs of his nyt days, at least Blair has since then attempted to embrace candor and live honestly and accountably.
Can't say the same for others, and that's the real shame. By the way, I soon added "ex-" to the husband.

Anonymous said...

I knew Gerald when he was a cub reporter; even then, he wouldn't have been swayed by the likes of Blair.

I shudder when thinking Gerald's career was derailed by a mad man, a journalistic miscreant.

Anonymous said...

...When he was visiting One Police Plaza, he was caught trying to break into the computer of a Newsday reporter...

Is there documentation of Blair breaking into a Newsday computer at OPP? In the back of my mind, there's this thought that just will not disappear: Someone used Blair, someone close to him, to take down the NYT, Raines, and Boyd by adding fuel to a sociopath's fire. Given Blair's memoir, I tend to agree that "the fundamental question is how Blair...knew...". And since that's unclear and stuff like the Pappu communications keep leaking out, it's hard to say that Blair has "embrace candor".