Yet another “big time” journalist has been exposed as a fraud:

The review found problems in at least 36 of the 73 articles written by Jayson Blair from the time he began receiving national reporting assignments in late October to his May 1 resignation. The Times described the episode as “a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper.”

Blair, 27, “used these techniques to write falsely about emotionally charged moments in recent history, from the deadly sniper attacks in suburban Washington to the anguish of families grieving for loved ones killed in Iraq,” according to a story the Times posted on its Web site Saturday before its publication in Sunday’s editions.

Turns out, he was plagiarising other newspapers and filing articles with datelines from far-off places while actually sitting in Brooklyn.

Why wasn’t he caught earlier? Well, the NY Times editorial staff owns up to a lapse among the senior editors’ communications and a lack of complaints, in addition to the plagiarists’s “savviness and his ingenious ways” of deception.

Uh-huh. Sure. I’d buy all of that, except for one thing: this guy didn’t even have the degree in journalism claimed on his resume.

Bulletin to the New York Times: fact-checking begins in the personnel department, and should continue all the way through when the news goes to print.

UPDATE: Clearly, it is a big story. Even the BlogFather has been affected.