Jayson Blair, The New York Times, and Paradigm Repair

This case study focuses on The New York Times's reaction to the Jayson Blair plagiarism/fabrication scandal by examining how the Times explained Blair's failures to uphold standards of newsgathering and its own failure of the editing process. The study uses image restoration and paradigm repair theories to explore how the Times attempted to repair its own image and that of journalism generally, and concludes that the Times demonstrated a more nuanced concept of paradigm repair than earlier research had shown. Although it distanced itself from Blair and emphasized the value of journalistic standards, the Times accepted responsibility for violations of those standards and admitted that the very structure of the news paradigm failed in this case.