December 9-16, 2004

books

Seth Mnookin

by Mike Newall

In Hard News: The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning for American Media (Random House, $25.95), former Newsweek media reporter Seth Mnookin offers a fast-paced, gripping account of the Jayson Blair plagiarism and fabrication scandal. Mnookin unfolds his narrative like an old-fashioned suspense thriller, painting rich character portraits while intertwining Blair's troubled career path with the rise and fall of former Times Executive Editor Howell Raines. Perhaps most interestingly, Hard News offers an All the President's Men-like behind-the-scenes look at how a seven-member Times investigative squad worked furiously to uncover the full depths of Blair's misdeeds.

City Paper: This book focuses more on Howell Raines than Jayson Blair. Why?
Seth Mnookin: Jayson really wasn't that interesting a character. I wasn't sure that he could sustain a narrative of his own. He was a low-level reporter who got away with a fair amount of lying in a very short period of time. And that was it. Howell was much more talented, more complicated and more interesting. He had more of an impact on the media landscape and a deeper love of journalism than Jayson. He struck me as almost Shakespearian: a brilliant, charismatic guy who fought his entire professional life to get to be editor of The New York Times. He gets there and within days is catapulted into the biggest story of his lifetime with 9/11. At first, he leads the paper brilliantly, and then it all falls to shit within a year. It's a mind-blowing arc.

CP: While writing this book, did you worry that it may only appeal to a small audience of media junkies?
SM: I was definitely thinking about what books about journalism have broken out and reached a wider audience. I always thought that All The President's Men was successful because it seemed like a detective story. Even though you obviously knew what happened, you got some of the real excitement of what it's like to be a reporter working on that kind of story.

CP: The heroes of this book seem to be the reporters on the Times investigative team assigned to look into the scandal.
SM: At the time that they agreed to do this assignment, there was a very real anxiety about what that might mean for them professionally. But they did what they would do on any story. They bit the bullet and decided that they were just going to report it out no matter where it took them. I loved hearing about them sleeping in the newsroom, not showering for days and getting into big confrontations with their bosses. Their names are not nearly as well-known as Jayson Blair, but they're all much more talented reporters. They have this sort of faith in journalism and what it means to work at The New York Times.

CP: What is the Times doing to prevent another Jayson Blair?
SM: They have added a public editor who independently reviews the content of the paper. And they recently announced the formation of a committee to look at credibility issues. I think post-publication spot checking of stories makes the most sense for a daily newspaper. At a daily, you don't have the time to fact-check every story before publication. And it would be too costly to check every story after publication. It makes sense, though, to go back and review even just one out of every 100 stories that run. It'd be like the newspaper equivalent of a speed trap. It'll make people think twice before trying something.

CP: So you hang with Hunter Thompson?
SM: I met Hunter a few years ago when I was working on a story about him. I went out to his farm outside of Aspen and we just became friends. He's a basketball fanatic. We bet on games. He operates on a much different time schedule than the rest of us. He'll call at 3 o'clock in the morning. When he talks on the phone, he only uses speakerphone. So there's this echo and he's usually swatting at something in the background and has at least one TV on and a few other people milling around the room. So I'll pick up the phone at 3 o'clock in the morning, say hello and he'll yell, "Seth, I didn't catch you doing anything weird, did I?"