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Howell Raines, Executive Editor of the New York Times for 20 months until he was drowned in the wake of the Jayson Blair affair last June, has just published a long (21,000 words) account of his tenure there. It appears in the May issue of the print edition of Atlantic magazine. My Times is its name. It is Raines's torch song to his employer of twenty-five years: he loves her even though she done him wrong and tossed him out on his keister. It is Raines's thesis that it was his determination to shake up the Times, make it fit...

NY Times Managing Editor Who Resigned in Aftermath of Scandal Says He'll Write Media Column The Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) - Former New York Times managing editor Gerald Boyd said Tuesday he'll write a weekly syndicated column to help people understand how newsroom decisions are made. Boyd and executive editor Howell Raines resigned last year in the aftermath of a scandal over former Times reporter Jayson Blair, who fabricated and exaggerated parts of stories. How the matter was handled generated widespread criticism and questions about newsroom operations. "I just think the more we can as journalists try to explain...

Receive FREE updates by email: | Before Jayson Blair: AIM and The New York Times By William AlfordNovember 12, 2003 Subsequent to the fallout over Jayson Blair's numerous instances of fraud, inaccuracy and plagiarism, senior staff at The N.Y. Times surely hoped that credibility doubts would end by throwing the 27-year-old journalist over the side in May. Questions nonetheless persisted over such practices as the widespread misuse of unnamed sources, attributing freelancers' work to staff reporters, and insufficient research and 'advocacy' journalism. On an early June "day that breaks my heart," publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. announced the 'resignations' of...

Associated Press Story - Former New York Times executive Gerald Boyd, who resigned last June in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal, is writing his memoirs. Currently untitled, the book will be published in 2005 by Amistad, an imprint of News Corp.'s HarperCollins that specializes in publications by black authors. "The Jayson Blair scandal will be covered, but it will be just a small part of the story," Boyd's representative, Robert Barnett, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney, said Wednesday. Financial terms were not disclosed. Blair resigned from the Times last spring after editors learned he had embellished and plagiarized parts...

Gen. Tommy Franks, the retired commander of the U.S. forces in Iraq in Gulf War II, is shopping his life story. Publishers, who will be called to a meeting in the Washington, D.C., area after Labor Day, had better be prepared to part with Hillary Clinton-type money. Simon & Schuster paid a near record $8 million for her memoir, "Living History," now in fourth place on the New York Times bestseller list. Franks is being represented by ICM's Marvin Josephson, who corralled a $6.5 million advance from Random House for Gen. Colin Powell's autobiography in 1995, and earlier snagged nearly...

<p>Gerald Boyd, late of the New York Times, will be on hand when he is ushered into the Greater St. Louis Association of Black Journalists' Hall of Fame on Sept. 6.</p> <p>Boyd resigned from the Times in the wake of the Jayson Blair flap. The induction will be at the association's awards dinner and photo auction at Washington University.</p>

<p>August 8, 2003 -- Former New York Times Managing Editor Gerald Boyd accepted some of the blame for the Jayson Blair plagiarism fiasco, but also made it clear he was not the disgraced journalist's mentor.</p> <p>During his first public appearance since leaving the Times, Boyd stood before a packed room at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Dallas and discussed his departure from the newspaper and the fallout from the scandal.</p>

Aug 7, 2003 Former NY Times Editor Shares Blame, Responsibility for Blair Scandal By Renee C. Lee Associated Press Writer DALLAS (AP) - In his first public comments since resigning over the Jayson Blair scandal, former New York Times Managing Editor Gerald Boyd told journalists Thursday it was time to take a hard look at why the scandal happened and "what lessons we can learn from it." Boyd, addressing the National Association of Black Journalists national convention in Dallas, received a standing ovation as he stepped to the podium. Some chanted, "Boyd! Boyd!" The group named him Journalist of the...

"The Perfect Country and Western Song"A lot of things happened last week that might seem worthy of discussion. Martha Stewart got indicted. Sam Waksal of ImClone was sentenced to seven years in jail (this week). The naughty bits of Hillary Clinton's autobiography leaked out a week early. Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd resigned from the New York Times. And the Israelis and Palestinians took tentative steps toward a hint of a beginning of peace. But there was another story last week of greater truth and enduring importance. Country Music Television (CMT) announced the top 100 country songs of all time....

If anyone ever needed to measure the dedication of The New York Times's employees to this newspaper, the level of anguish generated by the Jayson Blair incident is a pretty good standard. The discovery that one young reporter had faked or plagiarized a large number of articles drew extensive news coverage, but the publicity outside the paper paled next to the anger and soul-searching within. This week, Howell Raines, the executive editor, and Gerald Boyd, the managing editor, decided that the backwash from the Blair affair was keeping them from providing the effective leadership The Times needs. Yesterday, they resigned....

<p>The two top editors of the New York Times resigned yesterday, felled by a newsroom scandal that was magnified to crisis and public humiliation by five weeks of relentless coverage in print and broadcast media.</p> <p>Howell Raines, the executive editor, and Gerald M. Boyd, the managing editor, left the paper before noon. Times officials quickly announced that Joseph Lelyveld, a former executive editor, had come out of retirement to serve as a single, interim leader.</p>

June 6, 2003 Times's 2 Top Editors Resign After Furor on Writer's FraudBy JACQUES STEINBERG owell Raines and Gerald M. Boyd, the top-ranking editors of The New York Times, resigned yesterday morning, five weeks after the resignation of a reporter set off a chain of events that exposed fissures in the management and morale of the newsroom. Fred R. Conrad/The New York TimesHowell Raines, left, announced his resignation in the newsroom yesterday, with Arthur Sulzberger Jr., center, and Gerald M. Boyd, right, in suit. In a hastily arranged gathering in the newsroom on the third floor, the newspaper's publisher, Arthur...

Editor's note: Just a few hours after this column was published, Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd resigned from their positions at The New York Times. The New York Times Corporation has long been a different kind of media enterprise. Just as there are two classes of NYT stock, there are two classes of companies that comprise the whole. In a class by itself is The New York Times newspaper. It is the raison d'etre of the larger enterprise. Everything else falls into the general category of "cash cow," there to feed 43rd Street. Much of the managerial dysfunction of The...

Howell Raines and Gerald M. Boyd, the two top-ranking editors of The New York Times, resigned this morning, five weeks to the day after the resignation of a wayward reporter named Jayson Blair set off a rapid chain of events that exposed deep fissures in the management and morale of the newsroom they had led for just under two years. In a hastily arranged ceremony in the third-floor newsroom, on the same spot where the paper had celebrated winning a record seven Pulitzer prizes just 14 months ago, the newspaper's publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., told staff members that he wanted...

Just reported by Bloomberg News

<p>May 30, 2003 -- New York Times editors have made yet another appeal to appease its angry and scandal-weary staffers - this time about the use of freelancers.</p> <p>A memo yesterday from Executive Editor Howell Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd said the paper is going to sort out its policy on the use of freelancers, but didn't say exactly what that would entail.</p>

By now, three weeks into its epic wrestling match with the demons unleashed by Jayson Blair, one can almost feel sorry for the New York Times. But, when you think about how their chief editorial-side executives screwed up from beginning to end, any sympathetic feelings flee. Publisher Prince Sulzberger, Executive Editor Howl Raines, and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd, had looked the other way when Jayson came aboard flying the banner of diversity but without a college transcript. They promoted him and gave him choice assignments despite an accumulation of shoddy work, unexplained absences, and they continued to do so even...

So the New York Times lied. Why is that news? Do we report that millions of people commuted home without incident, or that hundreds of airplanes didn’t crash? No, because those are routine incidents. Well, when the New York Times prints out-and-out fabrications, it is just part of a longstanding pattern.

MAY 12--Apparently we weren't the only ones who thought that yesterday's New York Times examination of Jayson Blair's fabrications fell a bit short when it came to the brass taking responsibility for the scandal (geez, they moved Blair around the Times like Cardinal Law shuffled priests in Boston). This afternoon, Times staffers received the below memo from "Arthur, Howell & Gerald"--that would be publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., executive editor Howell Raines, and managing editor Gerald Boyd--noting that the ruling triumvirate accepted responsibility for the monumental fiasco. "In the case of Jayson Blair, our organizational safeguards and our individual responses were...