MARTIN DEVON HAS WHAT SHOULD BE (but surely won’t be) the last word on the Jayson Blair affair:

I really don’t think that this is about lefty bias or affirmative action. It is about poor leadership. Jack Shafer defends Howell Raines saying that any of us can be fooled. Fair enough, but Shafer (perhaps because he was fooled by a monkeyfisher) lets Raines off way too easily.

Any of us can be fooled by a brown-noser — I’ve been. The trick is to foster an open and honest atmosphere with your executive team so that your subordinates will tell you when you are being snowed. That’s what saved me.

When I hired a brown-nosing slick-talking dude that fooled me, I was lucky enough to have many people who felt comfortable enough to warn me that I had made the wroing choice. Different people, from my assistant to rival managers came to me and told me some uncomfortable truths that I (and my boss) had missed.

From the Times own accounts, the email warnings of Jayson Blair’s bosses show that there were credible people who could have (or tried to) blow the whistle on Blair, if only they felt like they could without screwing up their own careers. That was Raines’ failure.

Yep.