So, I’ve been thinking of pulling a Jayson Blair. Why not, I reason. If a New York Times reporter can hang out at his downtown apartment and pretend to be out on assignment, why can’t I?
Blair, of course, is the Times reporter who lied about being in various places, invented sources and made up quotes. Sounds like quite a gig.

I could stay home wearing my robe all day and take in some daytime television drama. I’d file stories about things I never witnessed and fill it with people I’ve never talked to. Heck, I’d never have to leave the apartment. I could just tap into my imagination and make stuff up. It would eliminate a lot of legwork. Plus, I wouldn’t have to worry about heady matters such as whether or not my shirt is buttoned right.

It won’t work, for several reasons.

In this area, people tend to know a little about everyone who makes it into the paper. If I get someone’s middle initial wrong in a story, I hear from that person, that person’s mother or somebody who met that person once at a rest stop and happens to know the middle initial is incorrect.

There is hell to pay when you print erroneous or questionable information. We have a very wonderful person on staff here to field calls from readers who catch errors. She is quite good at it, in spite of all the screaming involved. If I were to try quoting someone I’ve never met – or who technically doesn’t exist – our reader representative would be on me like flies on a rib roast.

Our readership area is smaller than that covered by the Times. No doubt about it. Some weasly reporter comes poking around, someone will notice and spread the word to the neighbors. If that weasly reporter claimed to be somewhere he was not, someone would make note of that, too. And it wouldn’t be pretty.

We send out questionnaires to people who are mentioned in local stories, did you know that? Those people are asked if the reporter got the information correct and if the story was accurate. Quality control. It’s like getting report cards back every week or so.

Then there are the editors. I know nothing about New York Times editors, but ours are ferocious. If you’re a reporter and you want to state that day follows night, an editor will want to know where that information came from. Did a police official say it? Can I get a meteorologist to go on the record? Is there a press release outlining the exact order of the sun’s schedule?

Editors are sometimes a pain (the way deer ticks and vicious dogs are a pain) but they keep us honest and alert. No skipping the legwork. No carelessness with quotes. No working from hunches and no fudging information. Jayson Blair would have been busted his first day on the job here if he tried to pull his magic tricks.

I had a hot story not long ago and I thought I had it covered. Five – count them, five cops – confirmed my information. I further solidified things through a jail official and a court official. But none of them would go on the record.

Could I print my hot story? No.

The editors frowned and batted me on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. They made me wait four days for the story, until I could get an official confirmation of the facts and get them on the record. I hate that word: official. It paints a picture of a person in a high office, possibly sitting in a throne and feeding scraps to dogs like me, hungry for information. But the editors insist. And usually, after my pouting and fuming, I understand.

The Blair story was hot for a while for understandable reasons. But for me, it was mostly baffling. Why become a reporter if you really don’t like hanging out with strangers and asking a lot of questions? I’ve said all along it’s not a real job to begin with. You get paid for running around, diving into the action and generally being nosy. Then you get to loudly announce your discoveries to anyone paying attention.

If I had to stay in one place and skip the interaction, I’d burn out fast.

And that’s why I can’t stay home and watch “M*A*S*H” re-runs all day while making up stories for print. That’s why I have to go out today and talk to real people who are doing real things.

And that’s why I have to try again to button this stupid shirt.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.

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