tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54151382011-06-08T02:16:50.658-04:00From the fertile mind of JaysonYour run-of-the-mill weblog from your run-of-the-mill disgraced reporter at a run-of-the-mill paper of record.rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comBlogger371100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1083273142664652562004-04-29T17:11:00.000-04:002004-04-29T17:16:03.140-04:00It's about time. My old boss finally manages to point out who's really to blame for this whole sorry mess. Fight the real enemy, and I'll see you on the remainders pile!
jaysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07536961100792585409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1080582267774991492004-03-29T12:42:00.000-05:002004-03-29T12:47:50.890-05:00Oh, come on. Now it's like people are just looking for ways to bust me. But if anyone's interested, I'll cut the price on the $57 piece of yarn to $54, and, just because I know you out there in blogland care, throw in a signed copy of my book for free (a $75 value!)
jaysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07536961100792585409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1079980456428898462004-03-22T13:30:00.000-05:002004-03-22T13:38:06.326-05:00Ouch. Unlike those hot blonde publicists, the women I bump into nowadays sure know how to shoot me down (scroll down). And Stephen told me that book signings were a great place to pick up chicks.
Oh, well. Maybe I've been looking for love in all the wrong places, to coin a phrase I just made up myself. But Jack Kelley just invited me to one of his Bible study group circles, so maybe my luck willjaysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07536961100792585409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1079633852484757772004-03-18T13:14:00.000-05:002004-03-18T13:21:23.623-05:00Wow, my book sales are now skyrocketing into the four-digit range! Color me Badd.
Apparently, those sales figures don't even include Wal-Mart. Which means I'm sure I've sold tons more books than that. After all, I'm sure Wal-Mart had no problem giving up shelf space usually devoted to Nascar magazines, religious polemics, and Bill O'Reiley books to make room for my nuanced masterwork. When jaysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07536961100792585409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1079631127773510962004-03-18T12:31:00.000-05:002004-03-18T12:34:31.686-05:00Hmmm. If I didn't know better, I'd think this guy is making fun of me.
Stephen, baby, why haven't you returned my calls?
jaysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07536961100792585409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1079112150950062472004-03-12T12:21:00.000-05:002004-03-12T12:24:49.060-05:00Wow. In the past week, I've sold 422 copies of my book? (second item). That'll buy a lot of Cheez Doodles.
jaysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07536961100792585409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1079026357492280642004-03-11T12:26:00.000-05:002004-03-11T12:37:15.373-05:00Now this is just silly. I've admitted to a few honest mistakes here and there, but since when is transposing a second-person account of an event for which you served as a source into a first-person account of an event in which you served as the central character considered plagarism? To quote a song lyric I just wrote for a new spoken-word CD of my own poetry, if that's wrong, I don't want to be jaysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07536961100792585409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1078944471983204002004-03-10T13:47:00.000-05:002004-03-10T13:50:07.733-05:00
Mmmmm... Publicity tastes good.
jaysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07536961100792585409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1078758748245319132004-03-08T09:58:00.000-05:002004-03-08T12:48:54.686-05:00
WELL, that wasn't so bad. I especially liked the recurrent slow-mo images of the Times building, and the dramatic camera pans over the back copies of the newspaper with my byline. Classy!
Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to bring up the moose with all of Katie's persistent questions and clumsy attempts to prod me into apologizing -- I mean, who does she think she is, a respected jaysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07536961100792585409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1078495860215462092004-03-05T09:05:00.000-05:002004-03-05T09:17:42.373-05:00WELL, I have to get ready for my big interview with Katie Couric this evening. Ought to be fun, even though the folks from the network told me to leave the Kermit the Frog puppet at home. In the meantime, I'll leave you all with one final installment from my carefully written and researched book. It'll probably hurt sales to give away the ending, but I think you all will be moved after seeing thejaysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07536961100792585409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1078276036485431452004-03-03T08:06:00.000-05:002004-03-03T12:00:14.076-05:00ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER EXCERPT. Since I didn't get a threatening letter from myself for running yesterday's world-exclusive excerpt from my new book, I think I'll share another chapter this morning. Here, I describe returning home after a soul-crushing day of work at the Paper of Record. Not that I'm bragging or anything, but please note the cleverly literary way in which I convey the oppressive jaysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07536961100792585409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1078242286591617742004-03-02T10:44:00.000-05:002004-03-02T12:43:49.500-05:00A WORLD EXCLUSIVE. While my publisher keeps making noises about suing my former employer for running unembargoed excerpts from my book, I could care less. That's why, exclusively here on my blog, I'm going to share the opening passages. I'm a little nervous, since this is the first time anyone has actually seen this in its entirety, but here goes:
I
It was the best of times, it was the worst ofjaysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07536961100792585409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1078161979648918202004-03-01T12:26:00.000-05:002004-03-02T13:05:40.590-05:00WOW, IT'S STRANGE TO BE WRITING HERE AGAIN. Apologies for the lack of updates over the past few months, but I've been putting all my creative energy into getting my book out. Speaking of which, here's the cover:
I was afraid it might be too subtle, but the editors promised me that it worked. Personally, I was hoping to use a picture Zuza took of me the night I ran around the newsroom wearing ajaysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07536961100792585409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1055343902222998262003-06-11T11:05:00.000-04:002003-06-13T14:48:12.070-04:00Home again. It's kind of odd to put my moose up on the mantle in my old room, next to my Chantilly High pennant and snowglobes from Boston, but so it goes. My parents are cool about me crashing here and everything, but they want me out mowing the tobacco fields adjoining the house at the crack of dawn. It sucks!
In the meantime, I still haven't gotten any firm offers on my book. I keep checking rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1055341774019787462003-06-11T10:29:00.000-04:002003-06-11T10:29:34.106-04:00At least there's no way anyone can blame me for this.rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1055278645556044692003-06-10T16:57:00.000-04:002003-06-10T16:57:24.593-04:00
Every time I see this, it makes me want to smile.rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1055267593736782172003-06-10T13:53:00.000-04:002003-06-10T13:59:31.740-04:00Interesting. With friends like this, who needs enemies?
A fun sidenote: I interviewed him once. Who knew that Hope, Arkansas doesn't have tobacco fields?rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1054921804177380632003-06-06T13:50:00.000-04:002003-06-06T13:57:39.130-04:00Geez. Someone remind me not to keep the Paper of Record's Web site as my home page.
From Mean Mr. Mustard.
rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1054903695051364642003-06-06T08:48:00.000-04:002003-06-06T08:48:58.440-04:00Well, that was one hell of a sleepover. Woke up this morning, and Howie and Gerry were gone. As I absentmindedly looked out my window at the tobacco fields, kicking empty cans of Schlitz out of my way, I noticed they had T.P.ed my yard on the way out. The bastards.
Then I took a closer look. Turns out they didn't use toilet paper, but copies of this:
When they're good, they're good.rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1054830771596539842003-06-05T12:32:00.000-04:002003-06-05T12:32:51.640-04:00On this difficult day for former Paper of Record employees like myself, it's doubly inspiring to see a young go-getter like this. Atta girl!rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1054826508292473622003-06-05T11:21:00.000-04:002003-06-05T11:21:48.330-04:00Wow. Time to fold out the futon and make room for these guys. Between Rickey, and Stevie, and Howie, and Gerry, I think I'm going to have a full house for a while.
Seriously, I can't believe these guys got fired. I hope they got to take their meese with them.
rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1054590678895253492003-06-02T17:51:00.000-04:002003-06-02T17:51:18.930-04:00Damn. I feel like such an rank amateur now. I mean, who would have thought about plagarizing recipes? In fact, I may give my new pals Rick and Steve a call and see if they want to collaborate on a celebrity cookbook. I'm calling dibs on the dessert section -- after weeks of dogged independent reporting, I came up with a great recipe for Neiman Marcus cookies. They'll taste like nothing you've rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1054306146024946372003-05-30T10:49:00.000-04:002003-05-30T10:49:06.016-04:00Ahhhh... Those were the days.
(Though in all fairness to myself, if you head into the alley behind Siberia, the bar from which I filed my Jessica Lynch story, you might see some discarded tobacco products, if not actual tobacco fields.)
rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1054224838559469752003-05-29T12:13:00.000-04:002003-05-29T12:14:57.543-04:00Busy today. I'm helping my pal Rick update his resume over a bushel of oysters his stringer sent him.
I got excited when I read this, but then I realized it's probably a joke. Sheesh!
rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1054137582162435342003-05-28T11:59:00.000-04:002003-05-28T12:03:14.070-04:00By now, you're all probably a bit tired of Jayson the Journalist. Besides, he had to die so that Jayson the Sensitive Poet could live.
I've been writing poetry since my formative college years. And much as Samuel Taylor Coleridge was inspired to write Kubla Khan after a particularly vivid opium dream, I wrote this after a gas leak in my on-campus apartment, which I used as an excuse to escape rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1054048373474048982003-05-27T11:12:00.000-04:002003-05-27T13:22:01.316-04:00Well, my story in the UK paper seems to be a good fresh start for me. One of the paper's editors called me this morning at 2 a.m., and he must have really been excited about the story because he was yelling in that wacky cockney accent they all have over there. He kept saying the story was "bollocks," which must be British for "great."
Meanwhile, I've been hearing that two of my former rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1053976198843387742003-05-26T15:09:00.000-04:002003-05-26T15:09:58.880-04:00This is odd.
I mean, you'd think someone would have caught this.rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1053915210970807622003-05-25T22:13:00.000-04:002003-05-25T22:13:30.393-04:00Took the red-eye back home from Baghdad last night. Between the flight and the cheeze doodle and whiskey hangover, I'm pretty beat.
Maybe I'll give my friend Rick a call. He could probably use a little cheering up. Who knows, maybe we could meet up at the Marriott Marquis bar for old times sake, toss back a few and talk about how much we both identify with Lee Boyd Malvo.
rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1053808049551043092003-05-24T16:27:00.000-04:002003-05-24T16:38:19.740-04:00It's been hard to find an Internet cafe here in Baghdad, but damn, has my muse has been good to me this weekend! First, I managed to knock out my book proposal in no time flat, and now I just finished filing my first post-Paper of Record story for the UK tabloids:
In Rural Baghdad, A Nation Challenged
By Jayson B.
Exclusive to the Independent Times Mirror Guardian
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Omar Sharif rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1053743500945263712003-05-23T22:31:00.000-04:002003-05-23T22:31:40.946-04:00What did I ever do to Tina Brown? I mean, really. Get a load of this:
"Blair has blown it in my view...There is nothing left for him now except a reality show costarring with Baghdad Bob."
Well, I am headed to Iraq....rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1053720976979543362003-05-23T16:16:00.000-04:002003-05-23T16:25:09.533-04:00Oops! Thanks to no fault of mine, The Rocky Mountain News has apparently decided to require one of its own editors to review and sign off on any NYT story with anonymous sources it plans to take off the wire.
That's in Denver, right? I think I flew there to cover John Elway's retirement a few years back, during my short-lived stint in the sports department. As I recall, that's the place with rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1053700433390452542003-05-23T10:33:00.000-04:002003-05-23T16:11:30.940-04:00Wow. Who would have thought that little old me ever would be the subject of this much attention? Outside of that whole front-page unpleasantness in the Paper of Record a few weeks back, that is. Thanks to Gawker for the link, though I don't know what that allusion to coughing was all about.
Quiet night -- it's hard to go out on the town when you can't expense the cheeze doodles and whiskey to a rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1053630166299737562003-05-22T15:02:00.000-04:002003-05-22T15:07:51.190-04:00It's shaping up to be a pretty boring afternoon. Who knows, maybe I'll return Steven Glass' calls.
I'm trying to keep myself occupied by working on a movie treatment. It's a western -- a cross between Bonnie & Clyde and High Noon. It stars a cocky but ultimately self-destructive loner type and his only friend, a winsome telegraph clerk of Polish descent. Together, they take on the town's jaysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07536961100792585409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1053623334353843822003-05-22T13:08:00.000-04:002003-05-22T13:08:54.360-04:00Now this is just sad. I mean, does Fox have no shame?
I'm glad they're appointing a committee to get to the bottom of this. Maybe they need an honest broker like Arthur Andersen to help straighten things out.rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1053614208947265032003-05-22T10:36:00.000-04:002003-05-22T10:52:48.090-04:00Hey, good news! If my book deal falls through, I've got other prospects. A few months back, I flew down to South Florida to do a story about these guys, and believe it or not, their executive offices overlook tobacco fields. I know I'm not supposed to reveal my sources, but this guy was one of the five anonymous officials cited in my DC sniper story. Okay, so he was all five of my sources. My rickeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17334442939030592864noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1053547249929052782003-05-21T16:00:00.000-04:002003-05-21T16:00:50.016-04:00Almost forgot. Did you guys see the story about me in the NY Observer today? The reporter was a guy after my own heart -- he had that instinctive eye for detail that separates a hack toiling away at some minor-league backwater daily from an up-and-coming national reporter at the Paper of Record. Here's an example:
His sleep-deprived college-senior look seemed to fit the environment, a dusty jaysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07536961100792585409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415138.post-1053540810241509682003-05-21T14:13:00.000-04:002003-05-22T13:13:18.840-04:00So Jayson Blair the weblogger could live, Jayson Blair the journalist had to die.
Wow, that sounds pretentious. Let me start over. I decided to start this weblog because I've been bummed out about all the press I've been getting. Maybe this will be the right place for me to tell my story as it really was, not as seen through the lily-colored eyes of the Paper of Record. Or maybe it'll just give jaysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07536961100792585409noreply@blogger.com