Stephen Glass (reporter) - Later Work

Later Work

After journalism, Glass earned a law degree, magna cum laude, at Georgetown University Law Center. He then passed the New York State bar exam in 2000, but the Committee of Bar Examiners refused to certify him on its moral fitness test, citing ethics concerns related to the TNR affair. He later abandoned his efforts to be admitted to the bar in New York.

In 2003 Glass published a so-called "biographical novel", The Fabulist. Glass sat for an interview with the weekly news program 60 Minutes timed to coincide with the release of his book. The New Republic's literary editor, Leon Wieseltier, complained, "The creep is doing it again. Even when it comes to reckoning with his own sins, he is still incapable of nonfiction. The careerism of his repentance is repulsively consistent with the careerism of his crimes." One reviewer of The Fabulist commented, "The irony—we must have irony in a tale this tawdry—is that Mr. Glass is abundantly talented. He's funny and fluent and daring. In a parallel universe, I could imagine him becoming a perfectly respectable novelist—a prize-winner, perhaps, with a bit of luck."

Also in 2003, Glass briefly returned to journalism, writing an article about Canadian marijuana laws for Rolling Stone. On November 7, 2003, Glass participated in a panel discussion on journalistic ethics at George Washington University, along with the editor who had hired him at The New Republic, Andrew Sullivan, who accused Glass of being a "serial liar" who was using "contrition as a career move."

In October 2003, a feature film about the TNR scandal, Shattered Glass, directed by Billy Ray and starring Hayden Christensen as Glass and Peter Sarsgaard as Charles Lane, was released. The movie, appearing shortly after The New York Times suffered a similar scandal to the one that Shattered Glass portrayed, occasioned critiques of the journalism industry itself by nationally prominent journalists such as Frank Rich and Mark Bowden. It presented a stylized view of Glass' rise and fall.

Glass has been out of the public eye since the release of his novel and Ray's film. In 2007 he was performing with a Los Angeles comedy troupe known as Un-Cabaret and was described by Billy Ray as being employed at a law firm, apparently as a paralegal.

Glass later applied to join the bar in California. In 2009, the Committee of Bar Examiners again refused to certify him, finding that he did not satisfy California's moral fitness test because of his history of journalistic deception. Insisting that he had reformed, Glass then petitioned the State Bar Court's hearing department, which found that Glass possessed the necessary "good moral character" to be admitted as an attorney. The Committee of Bar Examiners sought review in the State Bar's Review Department. In July 2011, the Review Department upheld the Hearing Department, holding that Glass had rehabilitated himself. The Committee of Bar Examiners filed a Writ of Review, thereby petitioning the California Supreme Court to review the decision. On November 16, 2011, the Supreme Court granted the petition, the first time in 11 years the court has granted review in a moral character case. On January 3, 2012, Glass' attorneys filed papers in the Supreme Court arguing that his behavior has been irreproachable for over thirteen years and is proof that he has reformed.