But Blair is undeterred. He says he has been making the public rounds as a sort of penance, a mass media mea culpa. “Ultimately I have to live with those bad decisions and those bad choices and they didn’t happen because of anything other than me and who I am,” he tells NEWSWEEK. Some critics claim he is capitalizing on his dastardly deeds–trading dirt (his own and that of former colleagues) for a $150,000 advance. Others say he’s not worth all the attention he’s been getting. Blair recently spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Brian Braiker about his infamy, whether the media has gone overboard on his story and whether anyone can trust a word they read in his book. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Do you have any advice for young journalists who may have unsupervised freedom and are expected to come back with results? I don’t think the advice just applies to reporters. Young people on Wall Street, young people working at factories, young people working in any profession that they love and care about, I think you have to be very, very careful in their attempts to prove themselves, not to stretch themselves too far. It’s hard for me to tell how much the reviews are driven by journalists who can’t separate themselves from the situation and how much of it is an accurate portrayal of it, but I hope one of the things that comes off in the book is that I put a lot of pressure on myself to prove myself. And I went too far. I feared that I was going to be found out and that someone was going to figure out that I didn’t deserve to be there. And I pushed myself into a situation where people believed I could do things I was not ready to do.
You mentioned that you’ve been reading reviews. Some of them have been brutal. Some of the adjectives used to describe you are “self-obsessed,” “arrogant,” “petulant,” “unsympathetic.” How do you react to that?
I think a lot of people would like me crawl in a hole and disappear and that’s the only way to show contrition. But it’s just not in my genes. I think that also many people in the media are circling the wagons around The New York Times–and I don’t mean everyone–because if this can happen at The New York Times and I’m not a demonic aberration, then it can also happen at their newspapers. I think it’s just hard for people to take a balanced look at it when it involves their profession.
What do you make of the suggestion in the New Yorker magazine that newspapers randomly fact-check stories as a deterrent?
I think it’s a great idea. I’d go even further than that. I think the problem with ombudsmen at newspapers is that they are essentially customer service representatives. I think you should have someone who does essentially random inspections and takes on investigating the more serious complaints. From my perspective, I think it’s something that should be done more aggressively. I think it’s a great idea; it’ll give people more confidence in the news media. I actually liked the New Yorker review because despite the digs it took, there wasn’t a dig I disagreed with, there wasn’t a positive thing I disagreed with. But on top of that I thought it was terribly thoughtful. I should have had him [Nicholas Lemann] as an editor
Do you feel like the coverage you’ve been getting and exposing yourself to this week has been a little overblown?
I think it’s been overblown and harsher than it would be if this story were coming out of any other profession. That said, the coverage has not been as harsh as I expected, if you can believe that. I didn’t expect anything to even be middle of the road. I was surprised that The Washington Post Book [World] took the stance that this is a hastily written fast-food memoir that raises some good points. It knocked me for some things, but I was surprised that they were so generous. Even the New Yorker piece, I was surprised [Lemann] was as generous as he was. He saw the fact that when I offered this treasure trove of negative information about myself, I’m trying my best to be honest. And he got the idea that one of the reasons why the book itself doesn’t read like a clear narrative arc is because lives are not like clear narrative arcs.
But it’s a little like the boy who cried wolf, though. Why should we believe that you’re telling the truth now?
That’s a determination that people are going to have to make on their own. I’ve said that I’m done lying. I tell plenty of negative things about myself in the book that I didn’t have to share. I’m taking responsibility for it. I made some mistakes. I still am a 27-year-old kid who had a golden opportunity, who lost that opportunity. And the book is a part of my therapy, so honesty helps me as much as it helps anyone else.
That said, this is still so fresh. Has there been enough time to give a full honest evaluation of what you did or what happened or what the legacy will be?
The timing was something that was really driven by my publisher’s desires. Would I have liked more time? Of course. But he felt like the market demanded for the book to come out now. I get better perspective about my actions and people’s reactions to it every day. In terms of the legacy at the Times, I think ultimately it’s going to make the Times a better newspaper. I hope they do not become less willing to take risks. Hiring [former executive editor] Howell [Raines] was a risk and the things that Howell was trying to do was a risk. There’s an unfortunate rollback of some of the positives he instituted. I felt he did bring some good things. There was some bad too.
He and former managing editor Gerald Boyd were both forced to leave in your wake. But so was Rick Bragg, considered by some to be one of the best reporters of his generation. What do you make of that? Was that fair?
No. I think the Times made a terrible mistake in sacrificing Rick Bragg and I think they made a terrible mistake in sacrificing Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd. The sad part of that situation in terms of whether it was a mistake or not is that it was done purely for public relations and the reputation of the Times and the truth went out the window. By the time Howell and Gerald resigned I have no doubt that [Times publisher] Arthur [Sulzberger] knew there was absolutely nothing either of them could have done about me. They were not informed by managers who worked under them, and to sacrifice them I felt was disingenuous of the Times.
There is a lot in the book about [then-Metro editor] John Landman. You complain about how hard he was on you. Well, don’t you feel like he should have been?
I think an important thing about the book to remember is that I lay out how hard John was on me and how it made me feel at the time, but I also lay out my bad behaviors, which make a pretty strong case for why John should have been hard on me. I don’t have a grudge against John Landman at all. I feel that he identified some things that other people were turning a blind eye to. It made me upset and it made me feel persecuted at the time, but in retrospect, in reality, he was the only one who caught on, or at least was willing to do something about it.
Your next goal is to write fiction. Some would say that you’ve been doing that all along.
I’ve made that joke as much as other people have, that I already excel at fiction.
Do you have any ideas for a novel?
Yeah, it involves a journalist. I am going to spend some time in South Carolina where my father’s family’s from, where I think I am going to set a chunk of the novel. The important thing for me from that perspective is just to be able to take my time. The sad part is that on that novel I don’t feel like I’ll be given a fair chance by the media. But you know what? I’m OK with that. I think that what will happen is that most first novelists get ignored. I’ll get eviscerated. [Laughs]
You come off as seeming a little conflicted on the topic of race and the role race played in your story. In one interview you say being a “racial pawn” may have helped your career, yet your title has a vindictive, vengeful tone to it.
I am conflicted on the role that race played. The root of the title initially came from a point where I emotionally felt very persecuted and I thought that the book would have a lot more to do with race than myself. As I began to examine my own actions, I saw that my own personal responsibility outweighed the provable impact of race.
Do you think your story would have been different if you had been white–either getting in at the Times as young as you did or your self-destructive spiral once you got there?
I think it would have been harder to get into the Times and I think that if I had been white, I probably would not have fallen so fast. I was already on the local train to self-destruction and I think it just pushed me to the express train.
Are you worried at all about this frenzied media push you’ve been doing for the book exacerbating your recently diagnosed manic-depression?
Yes. So I’m basically in constant contact with my psychiatrist and others. I have people watching me on television and watching me when I’m not on television to just monitor my behavior. Everyone agrees that my mental health comes first and if that means stopping the tour, we’ll stop the tour.
Do you feel a difference in the tone of the coverage you’ve been getting now versus the coverage you got when the story was unraveling last year?
That’s really, really hard for me to answer, which means it’s probably a good question. I think before people were trying a lot harder to figure out who I was and now they’ve drawn their conclusions and are landing on one side or the other. I feel it’s a bit more aggressive in its attacks now, but that doesn’t bother me. The biggest thing that has changed is me. I’m probably a lot calmer and a lot more relaxed about it and I can take the hits a little bit better. It doesn’t hurt as much. My skin is a lot thicker. Thank God.
