He’s baaaaack.

No, Jayson Blair hasn’t been hired by the Associated Press (yet). The former New York Times fabrication expert/plagiarist is now writing for a magazine that focuses on bipolar disorder. Via the Boston Herald:

After a humiliating plagiarism scandal that rocked the New York Times [NYT], Jayson Blair is quietly resurrecting his journalism career by writing about the very subject he says brought him down: Bipolar disorder.

Blair, 30, has been lending his expertise to 3-year-old bp (bipolar) magazine. He wrote a first-person piece about bipolar disorder and the role it played in his downfall that bp magazine ran last year.

“It went through a very rigorous editing process,” said Editor Nancy Tobin. “We just have a very rigorous editing process and a great deal of fact checking.” Tobin admits she was skeptical of Blair at first. “When I first got a call from Jayson Blair I was very surpised,” said Tobin, who didn’t know he’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Before he wrote for them, Tobin said she “made very careful verfications that he was who he said he was” and had him fax her his diagnosis from his psychiatrist’s office.

…Blair, who agreed to talk to the Herald via e-mail, said he’s also among several dozen writers and others bp editors routinely turn to for feedback. He continues to pitch them stories but had to quit working on a second piece earlier this year because he said he “was not up to doing a fully reported piece.”

When asked if he worries that people might think he is plagiarizing again, Blair said, “Why concern yourself over something you cannot control? The bottom line is that if it rings true, it will reach people.”

If it “rings true?” In other words, if it sounds sufficiently true, that’s what counts. Isn’t that the attitude that got him in hot water in the first place? No matter. If he’s revealed as a faker again, he can always blame it on his disease.

Further demonstrating his continued unwillingness to take responsibility for his own actions, look at how he describes his experience getting canned from his job for his transgressions:

When asked how he feels about losing a job at the New York Times, Blair said: “It was a terrible loss that I mourned and grieved and have accepted.”

As if it was akin to his dog dying.

I don’t know much about bipolar disorder. I do know that anyone who would pay this guy to write seriously needs his/her head examined.

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