Alum accused of faking magazine stories

Young journalists often dream of having their names given top billing in major daily newspapers and well-respected glossy magazines. But when 1994 College alumnus Stephen Glass -- a former Daily Pennsylvanian executive editor -- made the front page of The Washington Post earlier this week, it was anything but a dream for the up-and-coming writer. It was a nightmare. Last week, an editor at a World Wide Web magazine run by Forbes magazine found questionable facts in one of Glass' recent articles in The New Republic. A subsequent investigation resulted in his prompt dismissal for fabricating the story, which ran in the May 18 issue. Glass, who until last week was an associate editor at the weekly magazine, is now left with the fragments of a broken career that began several years ago at The Daily Pennsylvanian. Serving as executive editor of the DP during the 1993 calendar year, Glass, who is currently on the DP's Alumni Association Board of Directors, wrote more than 150 articles during his tenure at the newspaper. Since his graduation, he quickly gained respect as a bright writer whose knack for colorful prose garnered him freelance contracts with Rolling Stone, Harper's and George magazine, as well as a job with TNR. But the world as Glass knew it crashed down on him Saturday, when, after his own investigation into the validity of the article, TNR editor Charles Lane confronted and fired the 25-year-old writer. According to Lane, although Glass never gave the magazine a "gut-spilling" confession, he did admit to lying about aspects of the story and to fabricating "bits and pieces" of other New Republic stories. As a result of his dismissal, George magazine also terminated his contract Tuesday, according to spokesperson Lisa Dallos. Harper's and Rolling Stone have not made any decision regarding Glass' status with their magazines. Phone calls to Glass' parents' home in suburban Chicago --Ewhere he reportedly retreated to -- and to his home in Washington, D.C., were not returned. The suspect story, entitled "Hack Heaven," detailed the life of a 15-year-old computer whiz named Ian Restil who used his hacking talents to break into a company's online security system. According to the story, instead of prosecuting the youth, the software company, "Jukt Micronics," hired him in an effort to exploit his intimate knowledge of the Internet. Initially, Forbes' Digital Tool editor Adam Penenberg said he thought, "Wow, what a great article." But when Glass cited laws and a government agency that Penenberg had never heard of, his curiosity was piqued. After extensive research, Penenberg and his staff couldn't find any substantiation for Glass' story. And that's when things got hairy. Penenberg said he was "amazed" to find that Glass had written over 100 pieces in just three years. "I can't imagine that much output," he noted. Lane also said that Glass "produced just enough real stuff to create the illusion that that's all he did." Calling the episode of Glass' dismissal "the most wrenching crisis I had ever experienced in my professional life," Lane explained why TNR was led to believe in Glass' story. "It all appeared convincing," he said, referring to the "notes" that Glass produced to the editors, as well as a site on America Online for Jukt Micronics that was also denounced as fake. "The criticism of fact-checkers and editors [at TNR] is legitimate," Lane said, adding that "no editorial process is omniscient." He explained that because the editors trusted Glass, they did not treat him as a potential fraud whose work they had to scrutinize. "He was a superb journalist," said 1994 College alumnus Scott Calvert, who served as the DP's managing editor on Glass' editorial board. "This was not the Steve Glass I know." Calvert remembered Glass as a person who worked hard -- but also sometimes overextended himself. He explained that even before Glass started at Georgetown University Law School -- where he is attending night classes -- the young writer would work "late into the night." Georgetown spokespeople said yesterday that they had no comment on Glass' standing at the university. "He pressured himself to excel," said Calvert, who added that he was "flabbergasted" to hear of Glass' dismissal from TNR. So were several members of the press, including 1977 College alumnus Eliot Kaplan, who said he was "shocked" at the news. "I hope he comes out and says that he's working on a book [entitled] The Gullibility of Mass Media," explained Kaplan, a former 34th Street magazine co-editor. The current Philadelphia Magazine editor-in-chief added that the public has "a capability for forgetting" and that Glass could possibly find work in journalism again. Calvert, who is currently a reporter for The Concord Monitor in New Hampshire, was also optimistic on the topic of Glass' future. "If anybody can bounce back, it would be Steve." While Penenberg said Glass might be able to write under a pseudonym in a few years, Lane was more pessimistic. "My earnest wish is that Stephen Glass has the common sense and decency never to work [in any field] that is based on trust ever again," he said. And College 1994 alumna and current Jerusalem Post editor Heidi Gleit, who served as the senior associate editor under Glass, said: "When we worked together at the DP, there was a very heavy emphasis on accurate reporting.? I never forget what I learned at the DP and I just don't understand how anyone I worked with at the DP could." This incident could have far-reaching ramifications for the journalism world, according to Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post reporter who broke the Glass story Monday. "I hope that Glass' behavior doesn't sour editors on the 99 percent of young journalists who don't make things up -- but it raises questions about big-time magazines that use relatively inexperienced reporters," he said.

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