a dubious fifteen minutes of fame | an index |
|
of lies] the stephen r. glass index |
latest update 06.28.05 |
This index of the work of former New Republic associate editor Stephen Glass might be useful to those interested in his meteoric rise and fall as a freelance public affairs journalist. This is as complete an index of his published work as can be compiled. It will be updated as more articles appear, though I would still appreciate any assistance. As an added feature, I've compiled an additional brief index of relevant media deceptions and other imbroglios, for the sake of context. If you have any citations to add to this page, please feel free to e-mail me. And if Mr.Glass is reading this page, I'd like to invite him to get in touch with me. |
The only unusual thing about Stephen Glass' fall from grace, as far as I can see, is that he was caught. Fabrication, in small or large part, will always be common in a profession that, too often, values sensation over substance, and where older editors increasingly turn to younger writers to provide them with "buzz", or a window on trends, real or spurious. Freelance writers and junior editorial staff, like Glass, are the disposable shock troops of this regrettable but seemingly ineradicable side of the business. |
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Articles with known, possible, or obvious
fabrications are marked with ***. Most of Glass' work has been taken down, but the few links here were active as of 05/14/03.
- December 25, 1995 - "Cheese Biz".
- January 6 & 13, 1997 - "Probable Claus". ***
- January 19, 1998 - "Washington Diarist: State of Nature" -column.***
(The New Republic has printed a short summary of Glass' fabrications [see below] in their June 29 issue. The magazine has also purged most of Glass' work from their website - links given here are all that remains after the first major purge of the site. Click here to go to their website.) |
- Fall 1994, #70 - "Yes We Kenosha".
- Winter 1995, #71 - "A Pension Deficit Disorder". - Spring 1995, #72 - "Hire Education". - Summer 1995, #73 - "Happy Meals". - January-February 1997, # 81 - "Who Needs the SBA?". - May/June 1997, #83 - "Mrs.Colehill Thanks God for Private Social Security". *** |
- February 1998 - "Prophets and Losses". ***(WBEZ's show "This American Life" interviewed Glass about this piece. It is available on RealAudio as part of a radio documentary called "How to Take Money from Strangers".) |
- July 1997 - "The Bounty Hunter".
- December 1997 - "The Hollywood Hustle". - February 1998 - "Cashing in on Credibility". - April 1998 - "The Vernon Question".*** Apparently, the late editor John F. Kennedy Jr. drafted an apology to Vernon Jordan for this last article. George is now defunct. |
- October 16, 1997 - "The College Rankings
Scam". RS #771
- March 5, 1998 - "Truth + D.A.R.E.". RS #781 - April 16, 1998 - "Case History: Kellie Ann Mann", "Case History: Todd Davidson", & "Case History: Douglas Lamar Gray". Sidebars to "Mandatory Minimums: A National Disgrace" by William Greider. RS #784 - May 28, 1998 - "Eric Smara". RS#787 |
- A search of the last year's worth of NYT Magazines reveals no byline by Glass, though apparently he had submitted an article just before he was fired by The New Republic. |
- January 4, 1997 - "Amazon.Con - 'Earth's Biggest Bookstore'? Pshaw. Cheaper, faster, and more convenient? Pshaw again." with Jonathan Chait |
- 3/12/97- "Market Features: Book Review: The Online Investor" |
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American Journalism Review:
The Boston Globe:
The Boston Phoenix:
Brill's Content:
City Paper (Pittsburgh):
CNN Online:
Columbia Journalism Review:
Daily Pennsylvanian:
Earth Times:
Eye Magazine (Toronto):
FEED:
Forbes Digital Tool:
Fox News:
George:
Los Angeles Times:
Memphis Flyer:
Mother Jones Online:
The New Republic:
Newsweek:
The New Yorker:
New York Observer:
New York Post:
The New York Times:
Online Journalism Review:
El Pais (Madrid):
Pennsylvania Gazette:
Phillymag (Philadelphia):
Reed Magazine:
(The Forbes writer who unmasked Glass recalls the affair in his alumni magazine.) Salon:
Slate:
The Spectator (U.K.):
Suck:
TIME:
The Times (London):
U.S. News & World Report:
Vanity Fair:
Washington City Paper:
Washington Post:
(The Post, and Howard Kurtz, was the best source of news and opinion on Glass and related media scandals when the story was breaking. You might want to check out his column.) Wired News:
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Simon and Schuster published a novel by Stephen Glass - The Fabulist - the story of a young reporter named Stephen Glass whose career as a journalist is built on lies. Here's an excerpt from the novel. Here's the amazon.com page where you can buy a copy. To publicize the book Glass did an interview with "60 Minutes" - here's a transcript of that interview, and here's Virginia Heffernan's Slate review of Glass' TV appearance. The Fabulist - Simon & Schuster hardcover edition |
Lion's Gate Films made a film, Shattered Glass, based on Stephen Glass and his short career as a journalist. Hayden Christensen was cast as Glass, and Peter Sarsgaard was cast as then-New Republic editor Charles Lane - now with the Washington Post - who was a key player in exposing Glass' fabrications. (Christensen's casting remarkably produced few clever comments about talented and innocent young men tempted by the Dark Side, amazingly enough.) Steve Zahn played Adam Penenberg, and Canadian director Ted Kotcheff played Marty Peretz, the publisher of the New Republic. Writer Jonathan Chait, a friend and collaborator of Glass', was apparently given a sex-change in Billy Ray's script (based on Buzz Bissinger's Vanity Fair article), and his character is played by Chloe Sevigny. Ray made his directorial debut with the film. Here's the Internet Movie Database entry on the film. You can buy your copy of Shattered Glass on DVD here.
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Columnist Patricia Smith of the Boston Globe resigned from the paper after it was discovered that she had made up quotes and sources. Click here to read her mea culpa, here for the Globe's Ombudsman's review of Smith's case, and here to read an report on the incident by the Globe. Here are a couple of letters from sympathetic readers of Smith's column. Here are reports from the Washington Post, Fox News, CNN,The Oregonian and Salon. In 1981, Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke won the Pulitzer Prize for "Jimmy's World", the story of an 8-year old heroin addict. Two days later Cooke admitted that Jimmy did not exist, and Post editor Ben Bradlee returned the award. Investigations revealed that Cooke had also made up her stellar credentials. Humiliated, Cooke lost her job, but later re-emerged selling her story to Hollywood. Over twenty years ago, veteran journalist Nik Cohn wrote "Tribal Rites Of The New Saturday Night" for New York magazine, an article that inspired the movie "Saturday Night Fever". Years later, he admitted to New York that he had made up the majority of the piece. Click here for a summary of this incident. At the Cincinatti Enquirer, reporter Mike Gallagher was fired for stealing voice mail messages in the course of writing a piece on the Chiquita Banana company, aided, it seems, by an employee of the company. The Enquirer has run an apology to the company on its front page. Gallagher's primary crime is that he assured his paper that his sources were obtained in a legal manner. Salon has an essay about why this might be the most important media crisis of the year. Both CNN and Time magazine reported that the United States had used nerve gas in an attack on Laos during the Vietnam War in an attempt to kill defectors. They based their evidence on the recovered memories of veterans of Operation Tailwind.; They were forced to retract the stories when their sources complained that they had been misquoted. Here's a really good essay from Salon on CNN, Time, and the crisis in media credibility, from the perspective of a former Time investigative reporter. Lies and hoaxes have plagued journalism since its birth, perpetrated intentionally or not by a cast ranging from Edgar Allen Poe and H.L. Mencken to Seymour Hersh and Pierre Salinger. Click here for a useful overview of these media deceptions. The best source for media gossip and news is
probably Jim Romaniesko's Media News blog.
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