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 Support The DrudgeReport; Visit Our Advertisers  XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX TUE MAY 20, 2003 19:42:30 ET XXXXX SHAMED NYT REPORTER PREPARES 5-PAGE BOOK PROPOSAL The New York Observer will report on Wed. May 21 that Jayson Blair, the disgraced 27-year-old New York Times reporter, has prepared a five-page book proposal for a memoir that will focus largely how his race and substance abuse played a significant role in his downfall from the Times. Joe Hagan of the Observer has obtained two (2) pages of this five-page proposal. Additionally, Sridhar Pappu of the Observer has conducted the only full-length interview with Mr. Blair yet in record. NYO's Sridhar Pappu conducted a spirited, two-hour sit-down interview with Jayson Blair and his friend and former Times co-worker, Zuza Glowacka, covering topics such as Mr. Blair's relationships with Metro Desk editor John Landman, executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd; race in the newsroom--and how it both helped and hurt his career; drugs and personal problems; and the anger that motivated the whole episode. ***These are excepts from Joe Hagan�s article on Mr. Blair�s literary agent and the aforementioned proposal: David Vigliano, Mr. Blair's literary agent, told the Observer Mr. Blair's proposal would first be shopped as a film treatment, and then offered as a book. "We'll probably do something in Hollywood first and hone the book proposal over the next few days," explained Mr. Vigliano. "I think we will be getting the proposal out in a week or ten days and expect to make a deal within a week after that." Jayson Blair wrote about race extensively in the proposal: �I want to offer my experience as a lesson, for the precipice from which I plunged is one on which many young, ambitious, well-educated and accomplished African Americans and other �minorities� teeter, though most, of course, do manage to pull back from the brink. That precipice overhangs America�s racial divide; and the winds sucking us down into the chasm (cultural isolation, professional mistrust, and the external and internal imperatives to succeed, at all costs, to name a few) can be too strong for the troubled and unprepared�as I was�to withstand.� Commenting on his client's mental condition, Mr. Vigliano offered this: "I obviously wouldn't be dealing with somebody who was unstable." Already, speculation in the New York Post has suggested the possibility of six or seven figure advance for a literary work by Mr. Blair. Those figures, said Mr. Vigliano, �don't seem unreasonable to me. It's a huge, huge story. �I've talked to Jayson and I've seen the richness of this story. It's a very deep and very textured and layered story and he's a gifted writer--and no, those figures don't seem unreasonable at all, by any means.� Mr. Hagan also spoke to members of the publishing industry: Publishers were highly skeptical of a Blair memoir. David Rosenthal, the publisher of Simon & Schuster, which published Stephen Glass's novel, said he would not be interested. He said the speed with which Mr. Blair was grabbing for a book deal was troubling to him. �It does appear a bit complicated and unseemly,� said Mr. Rosenthal. �I am wholly uninterested,� said Jonathan Karp, the vice president and editorial director at Random House, echoing the sentiment of a number of editors contacted by the Observer. �It's a boring story that everybody already knows. I think the public will be completely satiated by the coverage in other newspapers and to revisit it in the form of a book is unlikely.� Still, he conceded: �Far more boring stories by less interesting people have probably sold over the years.� Developing... ----------------------------------------------------------- Filed By Matt Drudge Reports are moved when circumstances warrant http://www.drudgereportArchives.com for updates (c)DRUDGE REPORT 2003 Not for reproduction without permission of the author |
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