Now that the ongoing scandal of plagiarist/fabricator Blair has swallowed the careers of the top two guys at the New York Times, media have been filled with pundits, journalists and analysts dissecting What It All Means for the news media.
Certainly, the sight of executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd rushing from the Times building Thursday, trailed by a pack of cameras as if they were, say, indicted lifestyle guru Martha Stewart, made it feel like a dark day in the annals of newspaper journalism.
That the resignation of two of America's most prominent journalists seemed to come at the hands of a serial fabricator such as Blair - the 27-year-old former New York Times reporter whose plagiarism of a San Antonio paper's story exposed a history of lying to editors, filing false datelines and making up reportage - stung even worse.
"What amazes me is that the catalyst for all this could have a been a reporter who was a proven liar and cheat," said New York Times columnist Clyde Haberman in a Thursday interview. "We are going through a trauma, for now, that seems to have no end."
Because Blair is black, departing managing editor Boyd is black and top management has acknowledged wanting to support a journalist who would ethnically diversify their national reporting staff, the entire debacle has become something of a Rorschach test for those of us lucky enough to work in this industry.
Want to believe that efforts to diversify newspapers have dragged down the quality of our best newspapers? Then you'll focus on the fact that an error-prone Blair - with some 50 corrections over the past five years, according to the Washington Post - was eventually rewarded with some of the New York Times' best assignments, including the newspaper's Washington-area sniper coverage.
Want to believe that newspapers are filled with errors they never reveal to readers? Then marvel at the fact that few people misquoted in Blair's stories actually bothered to complain to the newspaper. And when officials in Washington finally did call a press conference to refute details in one of Blair's sniper stories, it still took a while before the newspaper - where some editors knew of his error problems - stepped in to deal with him.
Want to believe that the biggest newspaper stars - who seem to write powerful books, make seminar appearances and file astounding newspaper stories all at once - don't really do their own work? Then peruse the fascinating, post-Blair disintegration of Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times (and former St. Petersburg Times) reporter Rick Bragg.
Bragg quit the newspaper after he was suspended for using an uncredited freelancer to report a story that was written as if the award-winning reporter had seen all the details himself.
Blaming backbiting from newsroom enemies for the scandal, Bragg told reporters it was New York Times policy not to credit freelancers; managers and some staffers contended he abused the policy. All the while, speculation ran rampant that Raines was simply throwing Bragg overboard to try saving his own job.
Brought in to supercharge the newspaper's efforts, Raines, it turns out, didn't have a lot of friends in the Times' newsroom. Blamed for intensifying the paper's star system and ignoring the advice of rank-and-file editors, he built up a reservoir of anger among staffers that exploded when the Blair and Bragg controversies broke.
And we, the news reading public, are left to decide: is this a unique case of journalistic arrogance coming home to roost, or is there a larger lesson?
Some folks in the industry see this as the beginning of the end. At a time when newspapers have already been tagged as a dying industry, this series of scandals at the nation's most prestigious daily would surely shake the faith of the most devoted newsprint junkie.
But I see things a different way. I see a world of interconnected media that has grown so tightly wound together that frauds are exposed more often than ever before.
Crib distant newspaper reports as your own and eventually some Web site will probably unearth the deception, particularly if your work is online. Make too many major mistakes and the story ricochets across the media universe in a heartbeat, gathering heat and light until even the thickest supervisor is compelled to take action.
Much as I hate to credit him for it, Blair's biggest legacy may be forcing newspapers to confront a series of hypocrisies about themselves. Particularly in the New York Times' case, this scandal has pilloried a culture of institutional arrogance in a way that holds lessons for all journalists.
Print journalists once laughed scornfully when ABC's Cokie Roberts was exposed for filing a "live" report in front of a fake background making it look as if she was standing on Capitol Hill.
Now they must acknowledge that using uncredited writers to gather information for star reporters who fly into a town just long enough to justify slapping the location dateline on their pieces is doing much the same thing - fooling the public to make it seem they did more work than they really have.
And what does a dateline really mean? That the story was mostly reported from that site? That it was written there? That most of the incidents described in the story occurred there? That it was filed to the newspaper from there? Editors and reporters nationwide were surprised to learn how many different answers news outlets provided to those questions - often from the same newsroom.
More than any incident in recent memory, Blair's disintegration exposed journalists' uneasy relationship with the correction - a brief note correcting mistaken facts in a story that is supposed to assure readers that, when journalists do make errors, they will correct them as quickly and completely as possible.
Too many corrections in a given period should indicate a problem journalist. But a Weekly Standard story found star New York Times writers such as Adam Clymer and R.W. Apple had correction rates higher than Blair's.
Seems we're all making more mistakes than we might like to admit.
And then there's race. While some see Blair's case as a prime example of how race politics can shield inept reporters of color, I see the tale of a deeply disturbed young black journalist who used his newspaper's fumble-fingered efforts at increasing newsroom diversity - among many other things - against them.
During the last week of May, I had the pleasure of attending a regional convention held by the National Association of Black Journalists in Atlanta. And while we spent some time wondering whether Blair's ham-fisted playing of the race card would discourage news outlets from the tough work of keeping their workplaces ethnically diverse, we also reaffirmed our commitment to the idea that a newsroom seeking diversity shouldn't have to lower its standards - just work harder to widen its view.
Some may believe this is just more media navel-gazing, obsessing on a crime those outside the industry don't understand or care much about. But even as surveys reveal a deep public distrust of the media, those of us inside the machine know readers and viewers want to believe what we tell them.
They want to trust our reportage and they get angry when we violate that confidence, especially by design or as a result of arrogance.
In many ways, Blair's transgressions have helped rip the mask off practices that have misdirected consumers - proving that tiny omissions can have major consequences for any newsroom.
Already, newsrooms are re-evaluating how they assign datelines, give credit for stories and check up on reporters with accuracy problems. Some writers worry there's a witch hunt going on - especially given the tragic end of Raines and Boyd's careers at the Times - but I'm also grateful for anything that can let a little arrogance out of media institutions that have had it coming for a while.
With any luck, the continuing fallout from Blair's scandal will force journalists to adopt a little more humility and clean house a little more carefully.
So, you've got my thanks Jayson. You just might wind up leaving journalism better than you found it, despite yourself.
