More Fun With Lexis-Nexis:
The Life Cycle of Literary Scandals

Remember how innocent we were back in the summer of ‘98, when the Stephen Glass scandal shocked the Fourth Estate and left us dizzy with shadenfreude and confusion?

And the Jayson Blair fiasco in ‘03, which consumed us like a tropical fever as we watched every twist and turn on 43rd Street?

How times have changed. These days, as literary scandals keep piling up faster than it takes Viswanathan to toggle between control-C and control-V, we burp them out of our system within a few weeks, if not days.

Herewith the diminishing lifespan of the modern-day literary scandal, as measured by the number of weeks it takes for the scandal to survive, from its first revelation through to its sad end. We tallied the Nexis hits for the author in the week before the scandal broke and counted how long it took for those numbers to get back to that level:

Stephen Glass
May 1-7, 1998: 15 hits
July 9-15: 59 hits (peak week)
August 6-12: 13 hits
Life Cycle: 15 weeks

Jayson Blair
May 1-7, 2003: 26 hits
June 5-11: 539 hits
August 14-20: 30 hits
Life Cycle: 16 Weeks

James Frey
January 1-7, 2006: 25 hits
January 22-28: 316 hits
March 5-11: 44 hits
Life Cycle: 10 Weeks

JT LeRoy
January 1-7, 2006: 1 hit
January 8-14: 46 hits
January 29-February 4: 8 hits
Life Cycle: 5 Weeks

Kaavya Viswanathan
April 16-22, 2006: 7 hits
April 23-29: 212 hits
May 7-13: 38 hits
Life Cycle: 4 Weeks

Also, check out the previous editions of our “Fun With Lexis-Nexis” weekly series which debuted last month:

What’s A Synonym for Cliche?, Getting Our Priorities Straight, ‘Fear’ Factor of NY Times Sources, The NY Times’ Anonymous Sources

Popularity: 7%

This entry was posted on Friday, May 12th, 2006 at 3:09 pm and is filed under Entertainment, Hot Stories!, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “More Fun With Lexis-Nexis:
The Life Cycle of Literary Scandals”

1. Ian Lamont Says:
   May 15th, 2006 at 4:15 pm

   You can create similar comparisons with Google Trends, as long as the scandals occured in 2004 or later.