By Tom Weber, KWMU / AP
St. Louis, MO – Gerald Boyd, a native St. Louisan and former second-in-command at the New York Times died Thursday of lung cancer at the age of 56.
He was diagnosed in February but had been keeping his condition private from most friends and colleagues.
His career with the Times ended in 2003 amid the scandal involving Jayson Blair, who plagiarized stories for the paper.
A few months after he resigned, Boyd was a guest on KWMU's St. Louis on the Air. He said the issue came down to what he called "managing the wrong problem."
"We thought we were managing a problem that was related to a performance," Boyd said. "That is, a young reporter who was green and who was occassionally erractic, but who had enormous talent. And when that's the situation you can manage that.
"What you can't manage, we found out too late, was someone who didn't share our core values as they related to honesty and integrity."
Boyd was a White House correspondent for the Post-Dispatch before moving to the Times, where he was the first black journalist to hold many positions there. Boyd also had a number of accomplishments. In addition to being the first black journalist in a number of posts, Boyd also was part of coverage that won nine Pulitzer Prizes at the Times.
"Every wife would say she'd want her husband to be known as a great person, wonderful husband, father and good citizen," his wife, Robin Stone, a fellow journalist, said from her home. "But as I've said before, as a journalist, he was my hero; and I know he was a hero to many journalists in the profession."
At 28, Boyd was the youngest journalist chosen for Harvard University's prestigious Nieman fellowship, according to The Times reported. As deputy managing editor for news, he oversaw the 2000 series "How Race is Lived in America," which won a Pulitzer Prize.
As he rose through The Times' management ranks, Boyd became known as demanding and determined. "He knew how to mobilize a reporting team and surround a story so that nothing important was missed. He knew how to motivate and inspire," executive editor Bill Keller said, according to The Times. "And, tough and demanding as he could be, he had a huge heart. He left the paper under sad circumstances, but despite all of that he left behind a great reservoir of respect and affection."
Boyd and former executive editor Howell Raines were brought down by the scandal caused by Jayson Blair, whom they had groomed, and criticism of their management style.
In the subsequent months, Boyd said he made a mutual decision with the newspaper to resign after The Times discovered that Blair had plagiarized material, invented quotes and written stories using datelines of places he had never been.
The scandal exposed a deeply discontented staff that had lost confidence in newsroom leadership. Boyd shared the blame and responsibility for Blair's downfall but said management didn't realize how deeply troubled Blair was until it was too late. Had management known, "Jayson Blair simply would not have been writing for The New York Times," Boyd said at a speech made in Dallas in August 2003.
He dismissed as "absolutely untrue" criticism that Blair had been promoted and his problems overlooked because the reporter was black.
Boyd said it was disturbing that people would read more into the situation because of race. "I would be lying if I didn't say that I can't help wonder why after all these years of struggling to establish our work and credibility in the newsroom to be seen as top-notch journalists as soon as controversy arises, an African-American reporter and an African-American senior editor are automatically viewed as suspect," he said at the time.
After his resignation, Boyd was involved in several projects, including a writing a column for Universal Press Syndicate to help people understand how newsroom decisions are made.
"I just think the more we can as journalists try to explain what happens in terms of decision-making, to pull back curtains and describe what goes on in newsrooms or in journalism in general, the better we are," Boyd said in 2004.
Boyd joined Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism for a semester in 2004 to develop case-study curriculum materials, and he had been working on a memoir.
"I wanted to do everything I could to try to be a positive force in journalism and try to begin to deal with issues that I saw as important, such as credibility issues, such as leadership issues and issues involving diversity," he said at the time.
He is survived by his wife and 10-year-old son, Zachary.