Cracking Under Dateline Pressure

What do the Jayson Blair and Rick Bragg scandals have in common? Besides featuring New York Times Editor Howell Raines' former newsroom pets, the suspendable reporting offenses both involved fudging the concept of "datelines," those little all-caps geography indicators at the beginning of articles. "Month after month, year after year, Rick Bragg said, his mission was to 'go get the dateline,' even when that meant leaning heavily on the reporting of others," Howard Kurtz reports today. Maybe the Grey Lady needs to open up a few more bureaus in flyover country.