But skeptics such as McGowan point out that Blair went from a serious probation to being considered for a permanent slot on the Times' prestigious national desk within a matter of months. That, they say, suggests something strange was going on at the newspaper. "The pattern is this guy had editors talking about his performance, his erratic behavior, his drinking, yet he still got promoted," says McGowan. "He slipped through every safeguard, and there's got to be a reason why."

McGowan suspects a newsroom atmosphere of lenience toward blacks led to Blair's advancement. "I think the relationship he seems to have had with Gerald Boyd was probably something that inhibited editors from coming forward and pushing the issue [of job performance] as strongly as they would have with somebody else."

He also notes that after Blair came off his probation and was sent to the national desk, Boyd never told Blair's new editor about the reporter's checkered past. That's information national editor Jim Roberts says he wishes he had while dealing with the controversial work Blair did on the D.C. sniper case last year.

Black journalists agree that delinquent Times editors fell down on the job, but say that had nothing to do with the color of Blair's skin. "They haven't dealt with their own culpability, of how they let Jayson Blair get away with this," says former Times national correspondent E.R. Shipp, now a columnist for the New York Daily News. "It's about getting hoodwinked. It's not a race issue."

Others insist a newsroom culture of rewarding productivity explains Blair's pampering at the Times. "He was clearly a schemer who was rewarded for being prolific, being able to turn a phrase, having no life outside of the Times newsroom, and catering to the whims of his superiors," says Newkirk, author of "Within the Veil." "What editor is not going to fall for that, no matter what the person's race?"

Newkirk complained about the double standard that's applied when newsroom fraud stories break involving white journalists, such as Mike Barnicle at the Boston Globe, or Stephen Glass and Ruth Shalit at the New Republic. The scale of abuse in those cases may not have been as grand as what Blair did, but that doesn't explain why questions about race or cronyism were never raised then, she says. (Interestingly, in 1998, New York Times executive editor Howell Raines, then overseeing the paper's editorial page, penned a column attacking the Boston Globe for not immediately firing columnist Barnicle over charges he'd lied and committed plagiarism.)

A more recent example came two years ago, when a white graduate student at Northwestern University's journalism school was accused of fabricating facts in perhaps dozens of stories he wrote while interning at the San Jose Mercury News and the Philadelphia Daily News. After internal reviews of his work, both newspapers informed readers they could not confirm that people the reporter quoted actually existed. "During the whole investigation, no one ever said, Was he treated this way or allowed to continue on because of his race," says Bryon Monroe, the Mercury News' former deputy managing editor and currently a vice president for the National Association of Black Journalists.

"Look across the board at very unfortunate instances of plagiarism or fabrications. Most involve journalists not of color," says Monroe. "So for race to be brought up in this situation seems inappropriate and myopic."

Like so many other topics dealing with race, diversity in the newsroom has been an explosive one over the years, in part because of the press coverage it has generated. McGowan's "Coloring the News" book was condemned by the National Association of Black Journalists, which protested when the National Press Club recently gave the book an award. Sparks flew in 1995 when Shalit wrote a controversial 13,000-word missive in the New Republic attacking the Washington Post's push for diversity. The Post claimed Shalit had lifted parts of her work from others, while Post publisher Donald Graham attacked TNR as overly exclusive, even suggesting a new motto for the magazine: "Looking for a qualified black since 1914."

The argument in favor of newsroom diversity suggests not only that it makes up for decades of exclusion -- an industry-wide survey from the 1950s revealed just 38 blacks were working among the nation's 75,000 newsroom employees -- but also that a newsroom more closely resembling the general population can attract a wider readership. And "diversity" does not just not mean "black"; it means more Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, gays, women, disabled people and younger people.

In 1978, the American Society of Newspaper Editors decided 2000 was the year that the percentage of minorities in newsroom jobs should match the percentage in the general population. Back then, just 4 percent of journalists were people of color, while the minority population in the United States stood at 17 percent. By 2001, newsrooms included 12 percent journalists of color, but the national minority figure had jumped to 30 percent, and ASNE announced it had pushed back its goal of diversity parity to the year 2025.

In 2002, the average percentage in the nation's newsrooms inched up to 12.5 percent. With the recent advertising slump taking its toll, some newspapers have cut back on the money they spend recruiting minorities. Still, some top news managers know the more minorities they hire, the bigger their year-end bonus will be. At the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain, as much as 15 percent of a publisher's bonus is tied to minority hiring success in the previous year, according to a report in the Columbia Journalism Review. Gannett, the country's largest newspaper company, reportedly includes a paper's coverage of minorities when considering publishers and editors for bonuses. And during the '90s, Time Inc. magazines instituted a bonus policy for its managing editors in which 10 percent is linked to how much success the managing editor of each magazine has had in hiring and promoting minorities. According to a Times spokesman, the company does use minority hiring success when reviewing job performance for managers, but there is no direct financial incentive.

It's no surprise the Times has been a leader in newsroom diversity, in keeping with the Sulzberger family's long liberal tradition. Half a century ago, Sulzberger's father, Arthur Sr., overseeing the family's Chattanooga [Tenn.] Times, supported the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case on segregation, which won the paper enemies. Sulzberger soon ordered that the daily do away with the segregated obituaries, which were common throughout the South; 3,000 readers promptly canceled their subscriptions.

According to "The Trust," the definitive history of the Times co-written by Tifft and Alex Jones, the senior Sulzberger was also among the first big-city publishers to try to hire blacks in his newsroom. "The Trust" recounts one failed attempt that offers odd parallels to the Blair controversy. In 1945, the Times hired Fisk College graduate George Streator as its first black reporter. Streator, though, had no formal training and had difficulties at the Times. His correction file quickly expanded along with his unsatisfactory performance reviews. Soon editors discovered he was fabricating quotes, and Streator was fired.

Although the Times was championing civil rights in its news and editorial pages, the paper's newsroom did not reflect that inclusive philosophy. In 1961, a confidential memo to Sulzberger Sr. revealed the paper employed just one black copyeditor and only three black reporters.

To a degree, that same schism still exists between the Times' public pronouncements and the reality of its own payroll. A decade after Sulzberger Jr. set diversity as a top priority, the newspaper's track record for employing and retaining blacks is less than spectacular. The paper reported to the ASNE this year that 17.1 percent of its newsroom staff members are racial minorities. And most of the newsroom's top-ranking editors are white men. "The Times does seem like a place that suffers from a lack of diversity in important jobs," concedes Dwyer. "I don't know why that is, because I know they try."

It's the notion of trying hard that's led to the speculation on whether Times managers tried too hard to keep Blair. And whether editors -- before the fraud became apparent -- may have been reluctant to be tagged as the one who chased Blair into the arms of the Los Angeles Times or the Washington Post.

In recent days, the Times has tepidly tried to address the issue of race, with Boyd telling industry trade magazine Editor & Publisher that Blair "was not pushed or promoted for diversity reasons." Boyd, who declined to comment to Salon, noted the scholarship program Boyd used to enter the Times has actually promoted more white reporters to staff positions than minorities. That account differs somewhat from the Times' Sunday reporting, which stated Blair was "offered ... a slot in an internship program that was then being used in large part to help the paper diversify the newsroom."

According to the Times' account of the company's closed door meeting on Wednesday, Raines told employees, "I believe in aggressively providing hiring and career opportunities for minorities. Does that mean I personally favored Jayson? Not consciously. But you have a right to ask if I, as a white man from Alabama, with those convictions, gave him one chance too many by not stopping his appointment to the sniper team. When I look into my heart for the truth of that, the answer is yes."

The question now is: Will the scandal cause the Times, or other newspapers, to scale back its commitment to newsroom diversity? "There's a lot here that tarnishes the diversity agenda as it's practiced right now," warns McGowan.

Shipp disagrees. The Blair affair, she says, is "a black eye for young journalists trying to get ahead too quickly, for journalism professors who don't teach ethics, and for editors at the New York Times. It's not about race or lowering standards to engage in affirmative action. That's bullshit."

This story has been corrected since it was first published.

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