Blair, Jayson

Charging Ahead

Blair's rise to a reporting position at the nation's top newspaper was swift. He was a journalism student at the University of Maryland when he began to stand out as a driven reporter. His fellow classmates at the school's newspaper, The Diamondback, later noted that this was also when he began lying and making mistakes.

While reporting at the student newspaper, he exceeded the number of corrections that were allowed. Yet, after only one semester at the publication, he applied to be an editor. The staff supported another student, although an outside board chose Blair for the job.

As an editor, Blair continued to make mistakes, and was chronically unreachable. He would miss deadlines and make up stories. In one example, he did not return to the newsroom after saying that he was making a quick trip back to his apartment. The next day, he reappeared and announced that he had almost died the night before when the kitchen gas stove was left on; he was saved only when a roommate woke him up. Curious, one of the students made calls to campus housing and learned that there were no gas connections on the campus.

Despite the warnings about Blair's journalistic errors and deceptions, Blair was chosen for top internships. In 1996, he interned at the Boston Globe's Washington, D.C., bureau, and he returned the following summer to the newspaper's Boston offices.

In the summer of 1998, Blair landed an internship with the New York Times. He returned to intern at the newspaper the following summer. At this point, he had one year of college coursework left at the University of Maryland. He never earned a college degree.

At the Times, he continued to make errors. At one point, he told editors that he was having problems because of the death of a cousin at the Pentagon during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. It was later learned that Blair had fabricated the cousin.

In April 2002, Times' Metropolitan Editor Jonathan Landman issued a memo recommending that Blair no longer report for the newspaper. Blair took a brief leave from the newspaper and, rather than being punished, was awarded with a top story—the Washington, D.C., sniper case. He was not questioned when he used anonymous sources for important information.

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