NY Times reporter engages in massive fraud

The New York Times today has extensive coverage of the resignation of Jayson Blair, one of their national desk reporters, and the seemingly incredible fraud he perpetrated while working there.

Ten days ago, Jayson Blair resigned as a reporter for The New York Times after the discovery that he had plagiarized parts of an article on April 26 about the Texas family of a soldier missing in Iraq. An article on Page 1 today recounts a chain of falsifications and plagiarism that unraveled when The Times began an inquiry into that Texas article. At least 36 more articles written by Mr. Blair since October reflected plagiarism, misstatements, misrepresentation of the reporter's whereabouts or a combination of those.

The hardest part for the Times, however, is going to be explaining how something like this could happen. They've announced that management will be doing a separate investigation into what allowed someone to commit this level of fraud, and, hopefully, make the necessary changes to prevent it from happening again.