Gerald Boyd , the managing editor of the New York Times until he resigned this summer in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal, has signed with editorial director Dawn Davis at HarperCollins' Amistad imprint to write a memoir of his newspapering days and the lessons they have taught him about the practice of journalism and the politics of race. Boyd, who is African-American, was born in poverty in St. Louis and rose to be the White House correspondent of the city's Post-Dispatch before joining the Times, where he won a Pulitzer and became the highest-ranking black executive in the paper's history. His book was signed with lawyer/agent Robert Barnett at Washington's Williams and Connolly firm and will be published in 2005.