Pro-Con | Should former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair have spoken on ethics at a university when he was fired for making up stories?

Should former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair have spoken on ethics at a university when he was fired for making up stories?

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Disgraced ex-New York Times reporter Jayson Blair talking to college students about ethics? What’s next? The former head of Lehman Brothers on financial risk management?

Such was the blogosphere’s snarky tone recently when Washington & Lee University in Virginia announced Blair would speak at a journalism conference there.

But if the cheap irony of a famous fabulist lecturing on ethics was too much to resist, perhaps it could also prompt colleges to think more seriously about something they often shy away from: the value of exposing students to, and preparing them for, failure.

For some people, like Blair, failure is spectacular and public. For others, it’s just falling short of expectations — in their careers or personal lives.

But rarely is the podium held by someone who just failed.

| Justin Pope, The Associated Press

If you organized a conference on marital fidelity and made Elliot Spitzer the keynote speaker, that would raise some eyebrows.

Thus, eyebrows were raised after Washington and Lee University announced the keynote speaker for its upcoming seminar on journalism ethics would be Jayson Blair.

Blair, in case you have forgotten, is the disgraced ex-New York Times reporter who lied and plagiarized his way into journalism infamy.

The university paid him $3,000, a sum in line with past keynote speakers. As an ethics-seminar speaker, Blair is at the very least a counterintuitive selection.

Nearly everywhere he worked for the newspaper, red flags arose. Instead, they promoted him more than once, and the sins he committed grew worse. He invented sources and/or their words and trips to destinations he never visited.

| Dan Casey, The Roanoke (Va.) Times

Posted on Sat, Nov. 07, 2009 10:15 PM

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