Background
Blair was born in Columbia, Maryland, the son of a federal executive and a schoolteacher. While attending the University of Maryland, College Park, he was a student journalist. He became editor-in-chief of its student newspaper, The Diamondback, for the 1996–1997 school year. According to a letter later signed by 30 staffers, Blair made four serious errors as a reporter and editor that brought his integrity into question. The letter-signers alleged that questions about those errors were ignored by the board that owned the paper. Among the mistakes they cited was an award-winning story about a student who died of a cocaine overdose who was subsequently found to have actually died of a heart ailment.
After a summer interning at The New York Times in 1998, Blair was offered an extended internship. He indicated that he had to complete some coursework in order to graduate, and The New York Times agreed to defer it. He returned to The New York Times in January 1999, after "everyone assumed he had graduated. He had not; college officials say he has more than a year of course work to complete." That November, he became an "intermediate reporter."
Read more about this topic: Jayson Blair
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