His positions included political correspondent and bureau chief in Atlanta and Washington, DC, before joining the New York City staff in 1993.
A Times internal investigation revealed that 36 of the 73 national stories Blair filed with the paper over a six-month period were marred by errors, false datelines, or evidence of plagiarism.
Raines was faulted for continuing to publish Blair months after the paper's metro editor, Jonathan Landman, sent him a memo urging him "to stop Jayson from writing for The Times.
"[10] On another occasion Jerelle Kraus, art director for the newspaper's weekend section, was quoted as saying, "I hope things settle down and we get a decent executive editor who's reasonable.
[11] The paper's owner, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., also conducted an investigation and concluded that Raines had alienated most of the New York and Washington bureaus.
[13] In it, he said that he was hired by Sulzberger in the shared conviction that The Times had grown complacent and no longer functioned as a meritocracy in the assignment of stories to reporters.
In the only interview I have given on the Jayson Blair affair, I spoke on the Charlie Rose show of the resistance I had encountered as a 'change agent' who was handpicked by the publisher to confront the newsroom's lethargy and complacency.
A few days later, as he introduced my successor, Bill Keller, to the assembled staff, Arthur [Ochs Sulzberger, Jr.] rebutted my comment by saying, 'There's no complacency here—never has been, never will be.'
His first column, published in the March issue, analyzed the possibility of Rupert Murdoch buying the New York Times, which he said would have deeply adverse consequences.
[16] In addition to his 2006 memoir, Raines' books have included a novel, Whiskey Man (1977); an oral history of the civil-rights movement, My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered (1983); the best-selling memoir Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis (1993); and Silent Cavalry: How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta--and Then Got Written Out of History (2023).
[17] Raines's son Ben was the discoverer of the remains of the last known ship to bring Africans as slaves to the United States, the Clotilda, in Alabama waters in 2019.