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COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
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In "The Fabulist: A Novel,"published last week by Simon & Schuster, Stephen Glass, once a young star writer for The New Republic, who, in 1998, was fired for fabricating a spectacular series of stories, tells the story of "Stephen Glass,"a young star writer for "The Washington Weekly,"who gets fired for fabricating a spectacular series of stories. Like Stephen Glass, "Stephen Glass"fakes not only the stories but also the notes and documentation to back them up, the better to fool his magazine's editors and its fact checker, Victoria. Victoria maintains a "rulebook,"which begins like this:
acceptable forms of verification, in order of priority
1. The New York Times--the gold standard.
Whether as journalist, novelist, or character, Stephen Glass gets almost everything wrong--sometimes on purpose, sometimes because he just can't help it. But he got that one right. The Times remains the most important and, on balance, the best newspaper in the world. Its authority--slowly earned in the course of the century and a half since its founding, and especially the hundred and seven years since its purchase by Adolph S. Ochs, the great-grandfather of the present publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzburger, Jr.--isn't just journalistic; it's downright ontological. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the Times defines public reality. Although newspaper readership in general is in decline, the Times's circulation has been growing; it now stands at well over a million, half of which is accounted for by its national edition. The paper's overseas subsidiary, the International Herald Tribune, and its excellent web site give it global reach. So when the Times makes a mistake--a big...
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