Judith Miller on Sabrina Rubin Erdely: Rolling Stone scandal will ‘make her a better journalist’

In this Jan. 30, 2007, file photo, former New York Times journalist Judith Miller leaves U.S. District Court in Washington. Government information leaks and collisions with the media date back decades and decades. Think back to the Pentagon Papers. Miller went to jail in 2005 for 85 days rather than testify to a federal grand jury in the investigation into the identity of a Bush administration official who revealed the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame. (ASSOCIATED PRESS/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith attended the Tuesday night Harvard Club book party for Judith Miller’s new book, “The Story: A Reporter’s Journey.” Knitting together the topic of Miller’s book — i.e., the scandal over her flawed pre-Iraq war reporting for the New York Times — and this week’s journo-scandal chatter — i.e., the Columbia journalism school report on Rolling Stone’s flawed story on the University of Virginia — Smith asked Miller what she had to say about Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the writer of the Rolling Stone disgrace.

“I’m glad she wasn’t fired,” she said of Erdely, though Erdely is a freelancer. “Everybody is entitled to a misstep.”

“What she’s gone through is very painful and will make her a better journalist,” Miller said.

Yes, that part the Erik Wemple Blog feels comfortable confirming. For her next assignment, Erdely, in all probability, will not publish a series of falsehoods, will not deceitfully suggest to readers that she has done interviews that she hasn’t done, will not fail to give key institutions the information they need to comment for her story and so on. Which is to say, it won’t be hard for Erdely to improve on “A Rape on Campus.”