In November 1970, Esquire published one of the most memorable covers in its history. Illustrating “The Confessions of Lt. Calley,” the first of three articles about the man who, with his platoon, murdered hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai, it consisted of a photograph of Calley, in uniform and grinning broadly, surrounded by four adorable Asian children

Perhaps one reason for Calley’s smile was that Esquire had paid him $20,000 (the equivalent of over $100,000 today) to work with veteran journalist John Sack, who received $10,000 for writing the articles. This wasn’t the only instance in which Esquire paid the subject of a story: in 1963, the magazine had given Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) $150 ($1,000 today) to cooperate with a young journalist named Tom Wolfe for his article, “The Marvelous Mouth,” which it published in its October issue.

That these two instances of “checkbook journalism” took place during the period when the legendary Harold Hayes edited Esquire makes me wonder: Can journalistic greatness coexist with a practice usually associated with celebrity magazines and tabloid television?

In the wake of the James Frey, Stephen Glass, and Jayson Blair scandals, journalists and journalism educators have become obsessed with the profession’s ethics. While it is undoubtedly good that the profession is more self-conscious about its values, I worry that we sometimes emphasize it to a fault.

In particular, I fear my students are less concerned with getting great stories than maintaining their journalistic virtue. When I once advised a student that he didn’t owe his cantankerous profile subject complete candor, he was aghast. “But Professor X told us that we must always be completely honest with our subjects,” he protested. Cast in the role of ethical cretin, I tried, without much success, to explain...

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