More on this New York Times thing
I could link to more than 100 stories on the dumbass reporter for The New York Times who thought he could get away with just making stuff up in a paper read by more than 1 million people every day. But I won't. If you want to know more, I direct you to "The Industry" link at right.

(A quick aside: RER called him a "fuckchop." What a great word.)

I can tell you -- from personal experience -- a thing or two about young reporters and affirmative action and how to handle a sloppy reporter.

I was 20 years old, working part-time in the sports department at the Anytown Daily Bugle while sort of attending the Large Multi-Directional State University. I was something of a newsroom star, for whatever it's worth on that level. I had my first front-page tome at 19. It's not easy to crack the front page from the sports department. My supervisor's supervisors' supervisors knew who I was. I liked that, a lot.

When a full-time position came open in August 1988, I know of only one other candidate for the position. He was a black man, a little older than me, who had already graduated from college. To my knowledge, he would have been the first black employee in the sports department. In my unenlightened head, I had already written him off as a shoo-in and was prepared to transfer to Smaller Directional State Unversity, muttering all the way about the evils of diversity and affirmative action.

I don't know what happened behind the scenes. I only know he didn't get the job. I did.

My first step after that was to drop out of LMDSU. My next step was to become a little full of myself. About eight months and several hundred beers later, I was in full-suck mode. I was probably less than half-assing it -- why? because I thought I could -- by the time my boss sat me down and told me my job was in jeopardy, and not in a nice, nurturing way.

As I've stated earlier in this forum, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I didn't go off about how I was a star and was the best damn thing to happen to sports writing since Red Smith. I didn't whine and mope and plot revenge. (Well, OK, I did mope a bit.) I didn't go over his head for a verification of my greatness. I was moved to a job that was a better fit for me. I shaped up, drank less, focused more and started doing better work.

Since August 1988, I've never felt threatened by diversity, either as an employee or a manager. I think diversity for diversity's sake is wrong. I'd rather have a staff of 10 black Jewish lesbians who are dedicated and do good work than a really diverse staff of slackers. There's value in diversity, but only if it's backed up by talent.

I've accomplished what I've accomplished because of my own work. If somebody else gets promoted ahead of me -- no matter what color, race or gender -- I believe they got promoted because they did better work. That's the way I've seen it happen at the places I've been. I'm not naive enough to believe it happens like that everywhere. That's just been my experience.

This whole Jayson Blair thing is a gaping wound on American journalism. We'd have a better chance of recovering from it -- and not embedding in the public's head the idea that we're all a bunch of liars -- if we'd just shut up about it and get back to doing our work.

Now that I've said my piece, of course.