Rating: 
Summary: Buzz! Your 15 minutes of fame are up...
Review: "If worse comes to worse," David Carr said to Jayson Blair, "You'll always have the 'Rise and Fall of the Young Black Man' story to tell." Forced to resign from the New York Times, and struggling with drug addiction and manic depression, worse had come to worse. But instead of the suggested title, he called his story "Burning Down My Masters? House."
Jayson Blair joined the infamous rank of journalists caught taking artistic liberties with their reporting. (Stephen Glass of the New Republic had gone so far as to create a web site for a fictitious company mentioned in one of his articles, just in case anyone asked. And Jack Kelly of USA Today became a Pulitzer Prize finalist with a concocted story in which he witnessed a suicide bombing.)
Blair, by his own account, fabricated ?innocent? details for many of his stories, while Mr. Glass and Mr. Kelley fabricated entire articles, presenting works of fiction in place of journalism. He means to say that by contrast, he?s an angel. But in a passage marked by its conflicted inner dialogue (think Gollum), he can?t bring himself to confess to an obvious plagiarism, and the reader is left with an increasing doubt and mistrust.
In other words, don't think that you're buying any kind of confession: he never confronts the issue of integrity in journalism, choosing instead to hover around it, or flirt with other issues such as racism in reporting and management at the Times.
Without a confession, a reason is an excuse and not an apology. And virtually everything is offered as an excuse for his behavior: child abuse (never fully elaborated), bipolar disorder, drug addiction, mental illness, career pressure (compounded by being black), lack of strong management at the Times, and lack of racial sensitivity at the Times.
Full of self-pity, the tale of his downward spiral into drug abuse and career-induced mania culminates in a suicide attempt that seems somehow both fictional and nakedly sincere. But twisted conflict is Jayson Blair?s signature. A complex character born of truths-untold and told-untruths, he seems to be lying when he is not, only because he can barely resist the temptation. His eccentric and paradoxical nature wreaks havoc on reader empathy. For example, in a passage about his eager willingness to self-medicate, he practically seems to be singing a ballad about cocaine, calling it ?she.? Readers doing less than an eight-ball daily could have some trouble relating.
He also seems to have too much interest in how his reader perceives him. Even his word choices seem calculating. For instance, ?aggressive" is meant by the author to be ?assertive? or ?hard-working? even though it can?t be anything else in the context but ?bully.? Or he boasts about being "a walking paradox" while the reader can?t help but think "liar." The end result is that the reader?s attention is never properly directed, the book?s rhythm is broken by the heavy-handedness, and the sacred author-reader trust is abused.
On the plus side, he provides a thought-provoking view on how news is marketed and sold, bringing journalism?s bias (racial, social, and economic) to the reader?s attention. These biases determine how newsworthy a story is, as well as how the story is told. After reading his behind-the-scenes accounts, it?s easy to imagine how a reporter may be tempted to "spice up" a story with details that could easily be true, but aren't. The question of where to draw the line beyond which the editors stop winking and start frowning, become slightly blurred.
Jack Kelley, with his fabricated reports of international intrigue and journalistic privilege missed his career-calling as a spy; Stephen Glass's, with his desire to complete illusions with fake phone messages, post-it notes, and web sites, missed a vocation directing movies. But Jayson Blair, with his penchant for the dramatic, and his inability to distinguish reality from his imagination, probably could have made a good honest living as a novelist.
Rating: 
Summary: Jayson has something to say on race...read before you review
Review: (...)P>Coming from a fellow journalist in his age group, I really related to his story. For many journalists - and you do have to be a certain personality to be attracted to and endure this job - the work can send you into a tailspin. You take it home with you, it occupies your life and mind. Depending on what you write about, it can make you hypersensitive, paranoid, and full of anxiety. The New York Times had an Employee Assistance Program. Most newspapers do not have such resources and many young reporters have to learn on their own how to deal with the stresses of the job - taking it home with you, losing sleep because you are afraid you libeled someone, witnessing tragedy upon tragedy day in and day out, and having to distance yourself from it when your instinct is really to help. That's why you became a journalist.Drug use is rampant. Most reporters and editors I know smoke pot regularly or did at one point, and drink like fish, and you wonder how many are into harder stuff. I am sure there are many (...) reporters out there who have not been caught yet. For many others, they haven't reached that point and perhaps never will, but still have their own coping mechanisms that may be detrimental to thorough and fair coverage. One thing that I haven't seen on any TV interview or book review yet is anyone addressing the racial issues in the media - newsrooms and news reports - as Blair has. Blair does not simply use race as a scapegoat - he expresses interest in the effects that violence and oppression play throughout generations, be it upon Black, Jewish, Native American communities, etc. No one wants to talk about that though. No one wants to talk about the decisions made at a daily newspaper, where the murder of a poor young Black man is called "garden variety" but a white kid bringing an unloaded gun to a suburban school is front page news. No one wants to talk about how that affects the psyche and confidence of black and other underrepresented reporters and the effects on their self-esteem. It is a shock to the system particularly for a generation of people who were born after the civil rights movement, who thought that being able to move into any neighborhood and vote meant that we would be viewed equally. It's not so folks. I also have to say that no matter how (...) Jayson got, his writing is nice. It's not too flowery like a lot of the Times' journalists who have authored books, and he is good at summing up complexities in one or two sentences. Perhaps the greatest sadness is that it had to come to Jayson self-destructing and deceiving people in order for him to come out and tell the truth. It's something more of us journalists should be willing to do, but we don't, and I am one of the guilty. As Jayson points out in his book, it is because most of us are too concerned with writing the stories that will get us on the front page and noticed rather than focusing on the matters that led us to become journalists. You can't blame it on any one person. It's the way things are. Let's hope that in these times of upheaval and distress worldwide, more of us will be sparked to speak the truth before we reach an awful, damaging breaking point like Jayson did. Oh - and I'm glad he exposed the Times for what they are. They rely on scores of freelancers who are underpaid, overworked, and have no health benefits, to pad the stories of the prestige reporters. They get no credit and the bylined reporter has a great clip of thorough reporting. And how about the "toe-touch" - taking a train or plane to a city just to get the dateline, even though the story was mostly reported from New York or wherever, over the phone? That's a lie. That's (...) . A lot of local dailies do not do that. The Times has been deceiving people too. The "newspaper of record" really is a marketing tool. It's good, but by no means the absolute authority.
Rating:
Summary: Yikes!
Review:
The two stars rating is solely directed at people interested in the profession of journalism, for whom this car wreck deserves a scan, if not being dwelt upon. That's because journalism professionals ought be familiar with the details of this case as a cautionary tale & to avoid a repeat. For anyone else, I would probably give this one star. It isn't the worst book I've ever read (or, in this case, listened to) but it ain't got a lot to recommend it, either. I'd probably be agitated if I paid for it, but I borrowed the CD set from my Managing Editor, who received it as a donation, so no money wasted. I'd also be agitated if I'd invested much time, but I had to make a couple of seven hour drives anyway.
It was interesting hearing this on CD. Hard to believe it's abridged, as long as it is. It's read by Blair & hearing his voice somehow adds to the experience. He sounds well-educated, arrogant, intellectually lazy ... something really started to wear on me by about the seventh CD.
Writing with the perspective of a recovering alcoholic myself, I believe one of the basic problems is Blair had not advanced very far along the mental road of recovery when he wrote this. He may be physically sober, but his absolute refusal to accept responsibility for just about anything, or to express remorse, or to exercise much insight suggests he has considerable work still to do. I hope for his sake he gets to look back in a few years & be embarrassed he published this.
Blair lists other people's alleged wrongdoings in an apparent effort to justify or minimize his own or at least deflect attention to them. He uses alleged hardships in his life as apparent excuses. We all have hardships and many people overcome ones far worse than those Blair alleges without turning into ungrateful pathological liars.
I'm white, so I understand that I lack qualification to fully grasp racism & the black experience in America. However, it seems to me an extreme stretch to somehow imply, as Blair does, that in being a student at the University of Maryland and then getting an internship followed by a job at The New York Times, that somehow he was a victim of racism. We should all be so lucky. Hundreds, probably thousands, of people of all racial backgrounds would pay dearly just for a chance at the opportunities Blair not only squandered but actually repaid by undermining both the university program he attended & his employer.
In Blair's world, he is at the center of the NYT, at the center of the paper's staff, at the center of his circle of friends. The world revolves around him & his long-suffering girlfriend, about whom we hear way too much. He is terribly impressed with himself. He is impressed with his coverage of the sniper shootings, much of which he describes as limited to watching press conferences on TV & attending press conferences. He somehow seems to imply that he identifies with Malvo, that Malvo isn't such a bad guy for shooting a bunch of people in cold blood, that Malvo (like Blair) is perhaps misunderstood. Spare me.
The book is packed with trivia, name dropping and gossiup that could only possibly interest a small cadre at the NYT but which Blair seems to feel will be of compelling interest to the world.
Some of Blair's account of his career might interest some people unfamiliar with the journey taken by newspaper reporters, but -- again -- it's seriously undermined by Blair's failure to convince that he's changed & isn't still lying. Also, frankly, I don't care about all of the digressions in this book, I care about what Blair did in violating journalistic ethics. That's the only justification for this book to exist & Blair does a very poor job addressing it.
If true, Blair's criticisms of the NYT (specifically, its toe-touch/no touch datelines & failure to credit stringers) are liberties with professional ethics. But the problem is that given Blair's history & given the traversty that is this book, we have no way of knowing whether to give these claims much credibility. When I was actively drinking, I believed pretty much everyone drank as I did. Perhaps when actively lying, Blair believed everyone lied as he did. The problem is one needs time & space before deconstructing these self-delusions & Blair appears to have taken barely any before rushing out this awful book.
I am being exceedingly generous with stars. Do not waste your time if you are not a professional journalist or keenly interested in the media. Then, try to avoid paying for this & use it as a case study in what to avoid.
Rating:
Summary: Harrowing Personal Story
Review: A lot of people have asked who is the master of the house that Jayson Blair says he burned down? He answers that question in the preface of his book: he is the master of the house that burnt down and in the pages that follow him explains in intense and candid detail that deceptions that he committed that damaged so many people. Blair is an admitted fabricator, but there is no reason not to believe him on these pages -- he comes off as honest in this account, sharing details that only a person who wants to come clean would share. In the course of writing this memoir, Blair dishes out interesting inside gossip about how The New York Times works. I am personally a fan of the paper, but I will never look at it the same way -- I will always wonder how decisions are made in that newsroom that impact the entire world. There are many examples of them dropping the ball. But this book is first and foremost and powerful personal story of a young man with so much promise who lost control of his life. That is something that so many Americans can relate to -- Americans of all colors. I applaud him for writing this book. The one downside is that it was clearly write in a bit of haste, but there are sparks of amazing writing. Blair makes no bones about the fact that he was the master of his own house, the master of his own destiny and he burned it down. This is also a book that should be read in classrooms. Not necessarily journalism classes, but in psychology, mental health and sociology classrooms. I cannot wait for the movie
Rating: 
Summary: Censored Review Part Two
Review: About the book, it gets three stars solely due to the fact that Jayson Blair kind of sucks as a writer; well, maybe I should instead say he's not the best writer I've ever read. He writes of the stuff that readers of the National Enquirer gobble up in droves, and I guess that's not my style. Now, Martha Stewart has been branded a liar and her goods are still selling well, due to their quality. Unfortunately, in my opinion, Mr. Blair isn't going to fare quite so well in that area.
Rating: 
Summary: Addict's "War Story"
Review: As a former chemical dependency counselor, I take this piece for what's known in AA/NA as a "war story." That is, he digresses from honest emotion into what amounts to bragging about exploits. Ultimately, drug exploits are tiresome: "I snorted a bunch of cocaine, got it on with a stranger, spent all my money, woke up with a headache, blah, blah, blah."
I also agree with the reviewer who commented that the writing is sloppy and the editing evidently minimal. I had to shut the book for a few minutes after reading about Jayson's seeing the Challenger shuttle hurtle to the earth through his ten-year-old eyes. I cringed with embarrassment as he relays the "touching moment" when his fellow mental hospital patient tells him she "liked black guys in her heyday" and would have gone for him twenty years before. One of many true self-esteem lows that add little to the story!
Rating: 
Summary: human tragedy and insider gossip make book good read
Review: aside from the fact that i had my eyes glued to the intense passages about blair's drug abuse and manic-depression (americans enjoy reading books like these like we enjoy watching a car accident), i thoroughly enjoyed blair's stabs against a paper that can do no wrong. whoever denies liking the insider gossip blair provides is lying to themselves...of course it could have used a more thorough edit, but i would have been saddened if they edited out the timesmen giving space in the paper for sexual favors...a must read.
Rating:
Summary: A good book
Review: Burning Down My Master's House is Jayson Blair's story chronicling the
time he spent as a New York Times' reporter. Jayson Blair resigned from
The Times after the newspaper learned that he making up and/or plagiarizing
parts of some of the stories he wrote for the paper. The story received a
lot of publicity following his resignation and was in the news again once
the book came out. Mr. Blair characterizes The New York Times as the best journalism has to
offer, but also describes the newspaper as a fast paced, dysfunctional and
racially insensitive place to work. Her spent most of his tenure at the
New York Times abusing alcohol and cocaine and suffering through an
undiagnosed mental illness. Despite his problems, Jayson Blair did not come across as a sympathetic
person in this book. He lashed out against the racism at the paper that
held him back and subjected him to a different standard than other
reporters, and while I do not doubt The New York Times was not a hospitable
place for people of color, Mr. Blair's personal demons and choices doomed
his career with the paper. First, he did not adhere to the two cardinal rules which enable Black
people to survive in the workplace: You have to work twice as hard and be
twice as good as a white person to get credit, and You cannot do the same
things on the job as white people do without expecting repercussions.
Secondly, he did things like turn in erroneous expense accounts, drink and
drug on the job and use the company car for personal business that were
just wrong no matter what color the person. Jayson Blair bemoaned that his editors had him on a tight rein (in part
because of his high error rate while abusing alcohol and drugs) but then
faulted his editors for giving him a high profile assignment a little while
later which led to his emotional collapse. He also complained about the
fact that his transgressions leading to his resignation were similar to
those committed by white reporters, but the resulting punishment was more
severe. Jayson Blair destroyed his own career at The Times by not adhering
to the Black person workplace rules of survival (or even minimally
acceptable standards of employee behavior) and gave The New York Times all
the ammunition they needed to force him to resign. There is no sympathy in
that. Jayson Blair is a talented writer. The book was sometimes choppy, but
overall well written. However, while reading the book the I got the sense
that Jayson was not being totally honest with the reader or himself. He
had very little insight into his behavior and continued to lay most of the
blame for what happened on The New York Times. The emotions surrounding
the situation were still raw and this book would have been better had Mr.
Blair taken more time for reflection and self assessment prior to writing
his memoir. 2 ½ stars.
reviewed by:
misrich
Mahogany Albany
Rating:
Summary: The book was sometimes choppy, but overall well written
Review: Burning Down My Master's House is Jayson Blair's story chronicling the
time he spent as a New York Times' reporter. Jayson Blair resigned from
The Times after the newspaper learned that he making up and/or plagiarizing
parts of some of the stories he wrote for the paper. The story received a
lot of publicity following his resignation and was in the news again once
the book came out. Mr. Blair characterizes The New York Times as the best journalism has to
offer, but also describes the newspaper as a fast paced, dysfunctional and
racially insensitive place to work. Her spent most of his tenure at the
New York Times abusing alcohol and cocaine and suffering through an
undiagnosed mental illness. Despite his problems, Jayson Blair did not come across as a sympathetic
person in this book. He lashed out against the racism at the paper that
held him back and subjected him to a different standard than other
reporters, and while I do not doubt The New York Times was not a hospitable
place for people of color, Mr. Blair's personal demons and choices doomed
his career with the paper. First, he did not adhere to the two cardinal rules which enable Black
people to survive in the workplace: You have to work twice as hard and be
twice as good as a white person to get credit, and You cannot do the same
things on the job as white people do without expecting repercussions.
Secondly, he did things like turn in erroneous expense accounts, drink and
drug on the job and use the company car for personal business that were
just wrong no matter what color the person. Jayson Blair bemoaned that his editors had him on a tight rein (in part
because of his high error rate while abusing alcohol and drugs) but then
faulted his editors for giving him a high profile assignment a little while
later which led to his emotional collapse. He also complained about the
fact that his transgressions leading to his resignation were similar to
those committed by white reporters, but the resulting punishment was more
severe. Jayson Blair destroyed his own career at The Times by not adhering
to the Black person workplace rules of survival (or even minimally
acceptable standards of employee behavior) and gave The New York Times all
the ammunition they needed to force him to resign. There is no sympathy in
that. Jayson Blair is a talented writer. The book was sometimes choppy, but
overall well written. However, while reading the book the I got the sense
that Jayson was not being totally honest with the reader or himself. He
had very little insight into his behavior and continued to lay most of the
blame for what happened on The New York Times. The emotions surrounding
the situation were still raw and this book would have been better had Mr.
Blair taken more time for reflection and self assessment prior to writing
his memoir. 2 ½ stars.
reviewed by:
misrich
Mahogany Albany
Rating:
Summary: More lies from a conman
Review: He conned the New York Times. Don't let him con you, too. (...) The book is riddled with other misrepresentations and errors, great and small, from misspelled names to wrong dates to mistakes that are simply pathetic: For example, he mocks the Times for running a feature about "orchards" found in Central Park. He means orchids. Blair's inability to get facts straight casts doubt on the accuracy of his book's paragraph-long quotations from long-ago conversations. Especially since we're asked to believe that Blair was drug-addled, mentally unstable and blacked out much of the time. And even that part of his tale is hard to believe. This book also fails on a more fundamental level: It is badly written and boring, full of long digressions unrelated to his main story. I pity anyone who actually tries to listen to the 10-hour audio version. For Blair, it is yet another dubious achievement: a book that is both evil and dull. Perhaps he should consider another line of work.
|
