The Return of Jayson Blair

One of the key stories we covered and uncovered at Editor & Publisher when I was editing the magazine from about 2001 to 2009 was the Jayson Blair fabrication scandal at The New York Times, which among other things led to the exit of top editor Howell Raines.  Now I see the first doc on it is airing tonight on the Independent Lens series on PBS--via Channel 13 in New York and one hopes elsewhere.   (For more of Blair's "work," go here.)  I remember when Jayson sat for an interview with Joe Strupp in my office when he was promoting his quickie book--which was a complete bomb despite wide publicity.   For the following month no one would sit in "The Jayson Blair Chair." It became kind of a gag but was no laughing matter.  Still, Judy Miller and Michael Gordon deserved a worse fate, and Raines' bigger sin was the paper's coverage of the run-up to the Iraq war.  Here's a bit of a preview: