He ate babies, and sometimes OPs.
Enjoy,
Steven
The NYT regards itself as a fourth branch of government, with Papal-level infallibility. He demonstrated otherwise. Hilarity ensued.
Seriously: even if his lies were not materially important (making up random quotes and info because he was lazy, even though they didn’t necessarily change the story), he fact is we trust a “paper of record” to be just that. Having Blair on staff broke that trust, whether it was on important matters, spin, or even trivial things.
The thirteenth stroke of a clock is not only wrong itself, but casts grave doubt upon the accuracy of the preceeding twelve.
For that matter, in addition to whatever damage this did vis a vis the public trust, he definitely defrauded his employers, billing them for work he did not do at all or did not do correctly to their standards. That’s enough to get folks fired…and to get their supervisors fired, if they failed to supervise properly.
Bricker, that’s good! Where’d ya steal it from? 
Yeah, plaigarizing the work of others, and just plain making things up to fill in the gaps in his stories - yeah, that’s pretty nontrivial, to most of us.
If he’d been writing for the West Podunk Banner-Democrat, it would have still gotten his ass fired; it just wouldn’t have been national news. That it happened at the New York Times, and that his work somehow slipped past whatever fact-checking regimen they have, is what made it news.
Thomas Hardy, 1874, Far from the Madding Crowd