“How is it that a publishing house spends three years working with an author on a story that defies credulity, and doesn’t once check up on her veracity? How is it that a journalist for The New York Times — which ain’t the Bugtussle Daily Bugle — buys it hook, line and sinker? How hard would it have been for reporter Mimi Read to have asked the author, Margaret Seltzer (her real name), for numbers and contact info for family members she wrote about in the book? That’s Personality Profile 101, very basic J-school stuff. They don’t do that anymore at the Times? Somebody’s got a lot of explaining to do.
“The author was ratted out by her sister, who read the Times profile and phoned the publisher to say it was all a hoax…”
