The Truth about Jayson Blair

Bullshit

Last week, the New York Times dismissed reporter Jayson Blair for "committing frequent acts of journalistic fraud" as a result of widespread fabrication and plagerism in articles he wrote for the paper. What follows is the official New York Times biography of Blair, recorded here for history:

Jayson Imadick Blair was born Feb. 12, 1965 in a rural town in Nebraska. Or maybe Alabama. And perhaps the year was 1969, and the state even Virginia. Yes, that's it.

Regardless, born hermaphroditic with a freakish doubled tongue and horns on his head, Blair spent most of his adolescent life being laughed at by his peers. To compensate, he often created outlandish imaginary friends, several of which he still claims to speak with to this day, including "a highly placed source with the president."

At age 8, Blair began his journalistic career by creating the "Blairtimes, the newspaper of record for the Blair family." Blair promised to publish up to date news on the happenings of the Blair family.

His parents, delighted at first, becamse dismayed when they read frontpage headlines such as "dad beats son with a tire-iron" and "mom steals thousands from school while principal not looking." Other headlines convicting his parents, neighbors and even cartoon characters of crime appeared, none of them without sources or facts. His parents opted not to punish with his son, however, because he was a minority.

In high school, Blair developed a reputation for being a charmer. He amused his debate team members with stories about how he liberated the French and that he was responsible for the creation of heaven and earth.

"We thought he was just joking," said a classmate. "We later learned that he even plagerized fabrications, such as his claim that he invented the question mark." At night, a lonely Blair made out with his pillow, whom he eventually took to the senior prom and later that night attempted to impregnate in a hotel room.

Regardless, Blair climbed the ladder to of the school's newspaper to become editor, the first in the country known to simply republish Denny's menus.

His freshman year in college, Blair finally lost his virginity. To a mailbox. It wasn't until the middle of his sophomore year that he was mailed back.

At the beginning of his junior year, Blair was named editor of his college newspaper, narrowly defeating a picture of himself and a two-foot tall pine tree, the only candidates willing to run against the minority. Nevertheless, Blair said he was focused on creating the best newspaper possible, claiming he "would publish anything anyone told him about." Headlines such as "College janitor killed that dead kid in Stand By Me," "Did you hear what Jenny Olsen and Tommy Bradock were doing in the library" and "Mailbox should watch back after breaking up with me" became commonplace.

Upon graduation, Jayson Blair made it his goal to work for what he deemed the top newspaper in the country, the Weekly World News. When they wouldn't hire him because he "couldn't read or write" he went to work for the New York Times, without actually being hired.

Later, Times Executive Editor Howell Raines would say, "We only realized he was on the payroll two weeks ago." That was the same day as Blair's infamous story hit page 1: "New York sold back to the Indians for Piazza and two players to be named later," citing a "highly placed source with the president" as the basis for the information. Though the Times editors swore they fact-checked the piece, they admitted that they were unable to locate the source or the other informatant listed in the article, his high school pillow.

It should be noted that when the Times learned that Blair was writing fabricated articles, they sprang into action a year later to release him, immediately replacing him with several minorities, hoping that eventually they'll learn how to write news articles just by watching others.

-Brandon Stahl