Not Really A Jayson Blair Story, Honest

Michael Viner's no doubt preparing another indignant press release in response to Jack Shafer's pan of Burning Down My Master's House, but frankly, I'd rather pick up on this thread:

Why didn't Blair's editors notice his crimes earlier? As one editor who has been conned by a fraud (ask me about it sometime), I can testify that there are only so many questions and doubts an editor can raise to a writer before he must either trust and publish, or spike and fire.

Shafer's talking (as he has in the past in connection with L'Affaire Blair) about the infamous "monkeyfishing" article Jay Forman wrote for Slate--a story editor-in-chief Michael Kinsley at first vigorously defended, eventually conceded to be a hoax, and would himself invoke when Blair's deceptions became public knowledge.