36 Quotes by Jayson Blair

When we report stories, we don’t just want to talk to people who did the right thing. We want to talk to people who did the wrong thing.

I think people can learn from my experience – you know, any young people who are under pressure, whether you work on Wall Street or you work in a factory in Alabama, and young journalists.

I used to walk around saying that I’m just another black man without a college degree.

People in the news media after I got caught said how could you have not caught this guy? He had 50 corrections in four years. That’s a lot of corrections. Well what they failed to look at is how many stories there were and out of 700 plus stories, 50 corrections is not a high amount.

It’s hard to say what role race really played in my case.

Some people it seems to me would like for me to crawl in a hole and disappear forever. That’s just not in my nature.

If they’re all so brilliant and I’m such an affirmative-action hire, how come they didn’t catch me?

Well the first thing I’d say is that I’m not sure exactly what I’m supposed to do to show my remorse other than to say that I’m remorseful.

I believe my own demons would have caught up with me regardless of my race and regardless of whether I worked at 'The Times.'