May 21–28, 1998

on media

Breaking Glass

Up-and-coming journalist Stephen Glass had a knack for good leads in his colorful magazine stories. Too bad they were fiction posing as fact, according to his editors, who discovered in recent weeks that Glass, 25, fabricated at least one and likely many more stories in his fast-moving career that started a few years ago in Philadelphia.

Glass, the former executive editor of UPenn's Daily Pennsylvanian, left Philly in '94 and snagged an associate editor job at the Washington, DC-based New Republic, as well as freelance contracts with glossy, high-paying mags like George, Harper's and Rolling Stone.

His "Hack Heaven," in the May 18 issue of the New Republic, opens with an over-the-top scene of a 15-year-old computer hacker bringing software execs to their knees around the conference table. "Show me the money!" the kid actually screams at them as they cower. The kid, the corporation, the quotes—all fake. Glass' mentions of nonexistent organizations and political proposals raised the eyebrows of Forbes Digital Tool Web site editor Adam Penenberg, who reported the scandal May 11. New Republic Editor Charles Lane looked into the allegations, discovering Glass not only fabricated the stories, but went to elaborate lengths to cover his tracks, including inventing a Web site and creating a voice mail system for the fake company and handing in detailed "research" notes.

Reports in the Washington Post last week positioned Glass as an ambitious, overextended freelancer who cracked under the pressure, and mentioned other young writers who succumbed to the fiction-as-fact path of journalistic notoriety. Lane dismissed Post reporter Howard Kurtz's choice of the age angle as a "quick take on something moving very fast."

"This is not an issue of a person's age," Lane said. "It's an issue of a person's character. I'm only 36; some people think I'm too young. Though I don't know what they'll conclude about my qualities after this."

That Glass' hacker story made it through fact-checking, two other editors and Lane has threatened the weekly magazine's credibility.

"We fact-check rigorously," Lane said. "No alarm bells went off. Plainly they should have. I know it's an understandable criticism of us," Lane said, pointing out the incredible lengths to which Glass forged fact-checking materials and the New Republic's relatively small editorial staff of 25.

Glass did not return calls for this story, or to his editors, most of whom are now questioning all the work in his prolific past. So far, he has been fired from the New Republic and his contracts with Harper's and George have been scrapped. At least one subject of his is considering litigation, Kurtz reported in the Post: Glass reported in the New Republic of a pot-smoking, drinking night of Conservative Political Action Conference members who sexually terrorized a woman. Glass reportedly included a scene in the story with a mini-bar in a hotel that does not have mini-bars.

Lane said the New Republic has its "shoulder to the wheel" and is going forward. "It's all we can do," he said. "We'll examine what happened and take from it the appropriate lessons."

-John McCalla