Sweeping up broken Glass
Aida Edemariam was a fact-checker at Harper’s magazine in the spring of 1998 when it came out that journalist Stephen Glass had a habit of making up his stories. Glass worked at The New Republic, but he had recently published a freelance piece in Harper’s, which Edemariam was forced to reassess. In this Guardian piece, she looks back at that time and considers the case of Stephen Glass. It’s not the most timely story for North American readers — coming several months after Shattered Glass, the movie about the writer, and a full year after The Fabulist, Glass’s own noxious cash-in, er, novel about the controversy. (Shattered Glass just opened in the U.K.) But it’s an entertaining read, and Canadian book folk will remember Edemariam for her stint as the deputy books editor at the National Post back in the early part of the decade.
Related links:
Aida Edemariam on the case of Stephen Glass
