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JUNE 26, 2003 Now, high-profile media and business scandals have thrust him back in the spotlight -- and helped him tell his story of redemption. "There was Jayson Blair, there was Martha Stewart, and all of a sudden I'm in the middle of the intersection," said Winans. The plagiarism debacle involving Blair, once a rising star at The New York Times, and the fraud case against Stewart have made Winans much in demand on TV news shows, college campuses, and conference panels. "I'm in the position of having been through it already," Winans said. "I did something wrong, I took my medicine, I reinvented my life as best I could, and I've come out the other side." Winans was convicted of fraud in 1985 for tipping off brokers who traded stocks based on information he fed them about the paper's upcoming "Heard on the Street" column. Prosecutors said the brokers netted some $675,000, though Winans and his roommate and partner shared only $31,000 of that. After he got out of prison in 1988, Winans found a new career -- ghostwriting. He has ghostwritten 12 books and written one under his own name that recounts his case. For Winans, 55, the road to redemption became clear after he left New York in 1994 and started a nonprofit writers' center in his hometown of Doylestown, 25 miles north of Philadelphia. The Writers Room of Bucks County, founded in 1998 as a meeting place and workspace for local scribes, now boasts workshops, community outreach programs, and a literary journal edited by Winans, Bucks County Writer Magazine. "He's done his penance and he's paid his dues; that's over and done with," said Bucks County businessman Herman Silverman, a Writers Room benefactor. "In just a few years, it's amazing how people have gravitated to this thing he's started, how it's grown, how important it's become to the community." Winans says the Writers Room gave him the confidence to begin seeking engagements as a pundit and public speaker -- and he has no qualms about speaking his mind. He calls Blair "a nut job" who failed himself and was failed by his bosses. He predicts Martha Stewart will spend some time in jail stemming from the charges against her in the ImClone stock probe. Terry Halbert, a lawyer who teaches business ethics at Temple University, has invited Winans to recount his cautionary tale to executive MBA students. "He tells the story about his own negative behavior, and he makes it clear that anyone in the business world could feel the temptation to do the wrong thing," she said. Today, Winans makes no excuses for the past. "I spent the first part of my life seeing what I could get out of it and I'm spending this part of my life seeing what I can put back into it," he said. Joann Loviglio, Associated Press Writer , Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. |
