Reviewed by Rita Radostitz

For many weeks in the spring of 2003, newspapers and news magazines around the country blasted headlines about how 31-year-old African American reporter Jayson Blair had fabricated stories published in The New York Times.  Blair was credited (if that is the right word) with both sullying the reputation of the Times and tarnishing journalists all over the country.

In Hard Times:  The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning for American Media, former Newsweek senior writer Seth Mnookin explains that the “fall” of the Times wasn’t really the doing of Blair.  Mnookin lays the blame at the feet of Howell Raines, the Times executive editor who led the paper to its unprecedented seven Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage of the September 11th terrorist attacks, but whose management style led to an eventual mutiny among the staff, and ultimately his own ouster. 

Mnookin describes, in occasionally tedious detail, Raines’ reign at the Times, and critically examines how Raines’ management style shaped – for better and for worse – both the newsroom and the newspaper.

Mnookin’s narrative is compelling, despite the sometimes confusing cast of characters (there are more than 300 names listed in the index.)  But even those who thought they’d heard enough about the troubled times at the Times will be drawn in by Mnookin’s storytelling skill.  His prose style would never be called elegant, but the vividness of his details lends credibility to the story and helps put the reader inside the action.

Hard Times is not exactly a polemic, but it comes close.  Mnookin makes clear who he believes to be the good guys [the hardworking reporters and editors] and the bad guys [primarily Howell Raines.]  He is unrepentantly critical of Raines and his mismanagement of the Times during a perilous era.  Mnookin also addresses head-on the issue of race, and concludes that Jayson Blair’s ascension may have been eased by his race, but it was also fueled by Raines’ proclivity for favoritism.  Blair may have been hired and promoted because he was African-American, but he was also bolstered by his apparent closeness with Gerald Boyd, Raines’ chief assistant.

Despite his harsh criticism of Raines, Mnookin makes clear in Hard Times that he just wanted to tell the truth, the whole truth, the hard truth.  And because truth is always stranger than fiction, Mnookin also gets to tell a rollicking good story.