NEW YORK (January 26, 2005) - The New York Times announced today that former reporter Jayson Blair has been rehired, effective immediately. He was assigned as TheTimes' Chief Reporter to cover the upcoming Iraqi national election.
Mr. Blair, however, will not travel to Iraq. He remains in his apartment in Lower Manhattan and will conduct the election coverage from there. This arrangement seemed odd to many media observers, but the New York Times vehemently defended this practice. "Mr. Blair's unique intellectual capability, unlimited creativity and exceptional skills to deliver authentic eyewitness and first-hand reports of remote events from his home office have been proven again and again in the past," a spokesperson for The New York Times said. The first report with the byline "Jayson Blair, Tikrit (Iraq)," will appear in the Thursday edition of the Times. Besides Tikrit, Mr. Blair will cover several campaign events in Kirkuk, Fallujah, Najaf and Umm Qasr in the next several days. The New York Times believed this "Jayson Blair journalism technique" represents a quantum leap in the 21st century news coverage and has applied a patent for it.
