Tuesday marked the 30th anniversary of the day these words appeared on the front page of the Sunday Washington Post:

"Jimmy is 8 years old and a third-generation heroin addict, a precocious little boy with sandy hair, velvety brown eyes and needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin brown arms.

"He nestles in a large, beige reclining chair in the living room of his comfortably furnished home in Southeast Washington. There is an almost cherubic expression on his small, round face as he talks about life — clothes, money, the Baltimore Orioles and heroin. He has been an addict since the age of 5.

"His hands are clasped behind his head, fancy running shoes adorn his feet, and a striped Izod T-shirt hangs over his thin frame. 'Bad, ain't it,' he boasts to a reporter visiting recently. 'I got me six of these.'"

It was an anniversary most would like to forget. "Jimmy's World" was all a fabrication, created by reporter Janet Cooke, who went on to win a Pulitzer Prize that the Post was forced to return.

Thirty years later, Cooke's name is synonymous with the hoax she perpetrated. Her story is taught in journalism schools, and some say a portion of the damage she wreaked on the credibility of the news media remains.

"How could she do it? I still don't understand that," Benjamin C. Bradlee, the Post's executive editor at the time, told Journal-isms on Wednesday. "She was just one in a million." He noted that the Post has had no similar incidents since, and that while today's news industry has its woes, cases like Cooke's are thankfully not among them.

Still, asked whether the Cooke affair and its aftermath continue to resonate, Bradlee confessed, "They do in my soul."

Cooke's hoax cost other black journalists credibility in the minds of some editors. The fear of guilt-by-common-blackness was foremost in many black journalists' minds when Jayson Blair confessed to fabricating stories at The New York Times in 2003.

"Because she was black, innocent black journalists did penance for her sins," Gayle Pollard-Terry wrote of Cooke in 1996 for the National Association of Black Journalists' NABJ Journal. Cooke had publicly apologized that year on ABC's Nightline.

"Fifteen years later, on the May 10 Nightline report, Ted Koppel told Janet Cooke that an unidentified black woman who came to the Post after her told ABC that Cooke's transgression had made the new reporter's job all that much harder." The woman was Michel Martin, now host of NPR's Tell Me More.

"Jacqueline Thomas, then a young reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times, now Washington bureau chief for the Detroit News, remembers editors suddenly challenging her work.

"In other newsrooms, some black reporters were asked if they were 'Cooke-ing' their quotes. Others were told to double-check their sources and make sure they weren't 'Cooke-ed.' Many editors told black reporters that they didn't trust them or their work. Those editors often called sources to double-check, which undermined the reporters.

"In the wake of Cooke's lies and the Post's carelessness when hiring her, resumes were suddenly double-checked. References were grilled, at times even before the new job was offered. Transcripts were required from every academic institution attended decades after graduation.

"That is the sorry legacy of 'Jimmy's World,' which has become a case study in journalism ethics classes. Her name has become synonymous with fakery and bad journalism. Her sins have cast doubts on a generation of black journalists."

Black journalists at the Post today, most of whom arrived after the Cooke incident, live with the same competitive pressures Cooke faced. Informally, they articulated thoughts that included not wanting even to hear Cooke's name, recalling the questioning their credibility took in black communities and resigning themselves to the notion that some people will always seek the easy way. They mentioned white miscreants whose names never became as prominent as Cooke's.

Via e-mail, a couple went on the record.

"Even 30 years after the fact, the Janet Cooke debacle serves as a cautionary tale and a reminder of the solemn responsibility we carry as journalists," Michael A. Fletcher told Journal-isms. "Particularly now, in this cluttered, chaotic and immensely competitive news environment, it is easy to forget the sacred bond we share with our audience. We have to tell the truth and we can not succumb to lying — or even hype or exaggeration — in an effort to stand out. The current may be moving in another direction, but we have to remember that our role is to find and report new information. And, yes, the more startling, the better that can be for business. But at the same time, we have to provide context and do our best to illuminate the complexity of the forces shaping our lives."

Added Hamil R. Harris: "Integrity, truth and reputation are all we have in this business. I am in an Atlanta airport heading to Florida to bury my stepfather who raised me. On the plane I read a few chapters of All the Presidents Men. To me the legacy of the Post is to tell the truth and hold people accountable no matter where it may lead. Ironically on the TV is a story about one of the victims in the Eddie Long scandal speaking out. Journalism is hard work. There are no shortcuts even during the age of Facebook and Twitter."

Cooke, 26 years old at the time of "Jimmy's World," has disappeared from public view. She spoke for the first time about her saga in a 1996 interview with GQ reporter Mike Sager, a former boyfriend and Washington Post metro reporter. They sold the rights to the story to Tri-Star Pictures for $1.6 million, with Cooke getting 55 percent and Sager 45 percent, according to reports at the time.

A usable script was never produced, but Sager, now a writer at large for Esquire magazine, says Cooke hasn't completely vanished. "I’ve never lost touch with janet I don’t think, tho I’m not at liberty to divulge her whereabouts. I haven’t seen her since 96," he wrote Journal-isms by e-mail. "No movie alas." He said he gets an e-mail now and then.

Sager included the GQ story in his anthology, "Scary Monsters and Super Freaks."

Daniel Hunt, American Copy Editors Society:  An anniversary to remind us all of our purpose

Bill Green, Washington Post ombudsman, April 19, 1981, analysis 

Lymari Morales, Gallup Organization: Distrust in U.S. Media Edges Up to Record High

Michael E. Ross, theGrio.com: 30 years later 'Jimmy's World' still casts shadow on black journalists [Sept. 30]

 Patricia Sullivan, Washington Post: Aplin-Brownlee, 61; Former Post Editor Had Smelled Scandal (Oct. 26, 2007)

"The latest RTDNA/Hofstra University Annual Survey finds that the percentage of minority news directors rose in both television and radio. But those were nearly the only positive numbers in the survey. Overall, the percentage of minorities in both radio and television fell for the third straight year, although the drop in TV was small," the Radio Television Digital News Association reported on Wednesday.

"Women in radio news rose slightly, but the percentage of women radio news directors went down, as did both the overall percentage of women in TV news and women TV news directors. The drop in women TV news directors was small, and the percentage of women TV news directors stands at the second-highest level ever.

" ... the bigger picture remains unchanged. In the last 20 years, the minority population in the U.S. has risen 9.4 percent; but the minority workforce in TV news is up 2.4 percent, and the minority workforce in radio is actually half what it was two decades ago. Still, TV news diversity remains far ahead of newspaper."

The RTNDA study focused on local stations, not the networks. In a separate development at the network level, ABC News identified four people of color who have been named to senior producer positions since the National Association of Black Journalists met with ABC News President David Westin in 2008: Alvin Patrick, Sarah Amos, Jack Date and Catherine McKenzie.

Patrick, who is at Nightline, and McKenzie, of Good Morning America, are African American. Date works at This Week, and Amos at World News.

Westin announced this month he would step down. "As David mentioned, he has focused on the senior and executive producer positions because they have a strong impact on the editorial content of the programs," ABC spokeswoman Cathie Levine told Journal-isms.

A July 2008 study of network decision-makers by NABJ found that of the executive producers at ABC, six were white, two were Asian American and none was African American, Native American or Hispanic.

In the RTNDA study, survey coordinator Bob Papper noted that the minority population is projected to be at 35.3 percent in 2010, but the minority television workforce is at 20.2 percent and the minority radio workforce at 5 percent. He wrote:

"We end the decade with no gains whatsoever for minorities in TV news, and the percentage of minorities in radio news is down substantially.

"In TV, much of the drop in minority employment -- and Hispanics specifically -- came from a drop at Hispanic stations. Among non-Hispanic stations, minority employment slipped by just 0.3 percent to 19.3, down from last year's 19.6 percent.

"At non-Hispanic stations, the minority break down is:

** "10.3 percent African American (up from 9.8 percent)

** "5.7 percent Hispanic (down from 6.2 percent)

** "2.8 percent Asian American (down from 3.1 percent)

** "0.5 percent Native American (unchanged from a year ago)

"In radio, the percentage of minorities fell substantially. All groups dropped except Native American.

"The overall percentage of minority news directors in TV increased by almost two percent last year. It's still below the all-time high, but it's certainly among the highest percentages I've seen. Much of that was fueled by a jump in Asian American news directors.

"At non-Hispanic TV stations, the percentage of minority news directors rose from last year's 7 percent to 8.9 percent. That's just off the all time high of 9.1 percent two years ago. 3.2 percent were African American; 2.5 percent each for Hispanic and Asian American; and 0.7 percent Native American. That's about the same for African American and Native American and up for Hispanic and Asian American.

"The percentage of minority news directors in radio tripled from last year's paltry 2.2 percent to this year's 7 percent. All minority groups went up except Asian American, which slid slightly. Group-owned stations were less likely to have minority news directors than independent stations.

" ... At 2.7 percent last year, it was hard to imagine that minority general managers (at network affiliates that run local news) could become even more white, but they did. Now, under 2 percent of those GMs are minorities. The overall percentage of minority went up slightly because minorities at independent stations went up. Among the network affiliates, ABC and NBC stations were much higher than CBS or Fox — but all were low."

Papper is the Lawrence Stessin distinguished professor of journalism and chair of the Department of Journalism, Media Studies, and Public Relations at Hofstra University.

His survey was conducted "in the fourth quarter of 2009 among all 1,770 operating, non-satellite television stations and a random sample of 4,000 radio stations. Valid responses came from 1,355 television stations (76.6 percent)," he reported.