JOURNALISM IN THE AMERICAS

This man’s career switch beats them all.

Jayson Blair, the infamous plagiarist and fabricator of news, has quietly reinvented himself as a “Certified Life Coach" and is practicing with psychologists in the suburbs near Washington, D.C.

This story by the Associated Press is feeding the blogs this well-coached quote: “People say, 'Wait a minute. You're a life coach?' That makes no sense,'" Blair says. "Then they think about my life experiences and what I've been through and they say 'Wait a minute. It does make sense.'"

Blair, now 33, resigned in disgrace in 2003, leaving a scandal that caused two top executives at the paper to quit. The Times called Blair’s acts “a profound betrayal of trust and a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper.”

But the psychologist who hired Blair was willing to overlook the former national correspondent’s track record of stealing material from other news organizations, inventing quotes by people he had never interviewed, and saying he had reported from places that he had not visited. He was impressed with Blair’s leadership of a support group for people with bipolar disorder, an illness that Blair himself has experienced, the AP’s Matthew Barakat explains.

Blair’s clients include corporate executives seeking career counseling in order to advance, “a natural for Blair, who schmoozed his way through newsroom politics to land a premier reporting gig in his mid-20s without a college degree,” Barakat says.

No one would begrudge Blair’s need to earn a living. But for those journalists who have lost their jobs after years of honest work, today’s job market is so bleak that some reporters have transferred from jobs in the newsroom to the mail room. Others have switched to public relations. One foreign correspondent left his newspaper to manage a Texas strip club.

Many who shook their heads at Blair’s acts six years ago will wonder now how he keeps landing on his feet, this time in coaching shoes.