Please check out the following article by Bob Mills, who is involved in a bipolar support group in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

...The gravamen of Burning Down My Masters' House doesn't have to do with the Times but with Blair's psychological condition, which he diagnoses, persuasively, as severe manic depression.

- Nicholas Lehman, dean, Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University

The New Yorker

Jayson Blair

...is the former New York Times reporter who was caught plagiarizing and fabricating elements of his stories in the Spring of 2003. Blair has returned to college full-time and completed the final courses toward a B.A. in Business Communication . He plans to focus his graduate level research on the interconnections between psychopathology and organizational change. He presently is a certified life coach, volunteers by teaching students about journalism, putting in hours at a library and through other community service, including a bipolar support group in Northern Virginia , where he now resides. Blair and his parents, Thomas and Frances Blair, have taken a strong interest in mental health issues and have supported mental health programs in Virginia , North Carolina , Connecticut and New York City .

The Times reported on Blair's journalistic misdeeds in an unprecedented 13,000-plus word front-page story on Mothers Day that year. The story virtually ensured that the "Jayson Blair Scandal" would live in infamy. What was not known at the time is this: Jayson Blair was suffering from untreated manic-depressive (a.k.a. bipolar) disorder at the time he committed the journalistic offenses that are at the heart of the scandal. He is now being successfully treated for his illness and is in recovery. He has become an advocate for the mentally ill, and often speaks to groups and gives interviews on mental health issues. He also appears before journalism students using his fall from grace as a cautionary tale to them to stick to an ethical professional path. In addition to his work for the mentally ill, Blair is now president of Azure Entertainment. "Burning Down My Masters' House," Blair's chronicle of his short-lived journalism career and his spectacular fall from grace, was published in the Spring of 2004. A paperback edition, with new information and clarifications, is now in the works.

"Vivid, wired, serviceably written and paced, and, in a way, more interesting for its artlessness," Columbia University Journalism School Dean Nicholas Lehman wrote of "Burning Down My Masters' House" in The New Yorker. "Here, you see the real Blair, not a Lillian Hellman-like fully imagined and realized character who happens to share the memoirist's name....He has that familiar addict's quality of bracingly honest and aware of his faults but nonetheless incapable of behaving decently....Blair evidently does not have the ability to lie to himself about himself, and the gravamen of "Burning Down My Masters' House" does not have to do with the Times at all but with Blair's psychological condition, which he diagnoses, persuasively, as severe manic depression."

Blair founded Azure Entertainment in 2003 to handle a number of publishing projects, including website design and manuscript writing. Azure is based in Centreville , Virginia , where Blair lives.

With his assistance and encouragement, Jayson's parents, Thomas and Frances Blair, founded a mental health project through which he supports substance abuse and mental health programs in Virginia , Northern North Carolina, and New York City . The Azure Mental Health Project is designed to support those suffering from mental llness through means tailored to individual needs. Its mission is to address in part the special needs of sufferers by filling in some gaps in governmental support systems.

UPDATED: October 2007