Well, Rolling Stone magazine has really made a mess of it, hasn’t it?

A report from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, commissioned by the magazine, has concluded that the mag failed to do even basic due diligence in a cover story on a gang rape at the University of Virginia that it was forced to retract.

The author of the article – Sabrina Rubin Erdely, who will keep her job as will her bosses – failed to identify the attacker of the young woman, Jackie, or interview her friends. Apparently, her editors had a remarkable lack of curiosity about such details as well.

“Rolling Stone’s fundamental mistake, (managing editor Will) Dana said, was in suspending any skepticism about Jackie’s account because of the sensitivity of the issue,” The New York Times’ Ravi Somaiya wrote. ...