Jayson Blair

I expect more than a few bloggers will be talking about Jayson Blair today. CalPundit has a post here about it.

So far in my reading comes this gem of an observation from Al Giordano of Narco News;

Any journalist - young or old - assigned to write 73 stories in seven months - 600 in the prior three years - is being asked, in effect, to produce "junk food journalism." At institutions like the giant New York Times, sure, they dress it all up and make it look sufficiently effete and snobbish so that it has the whiff of expensive uptown champagne rather than cheap Bowery wine; but the hangover from consuming its product is the same. Cheez Doodles from the company vending machines seem a natural backdrop for this form of assembly line journalism: the company, after all, and not Blair, put the the Cheez Doodles into the sacrosanct cathedral on 43rd Street.

I haven't read-up on the incident and don't have journalism experience to afford a decent apprisal of the situation. But off-hand my first reaction is, what on earth does race have to do with it?