Everett Herald says sports columnist lifted passages from SI

assholes like this need to be fired on the spot. It's even more amazing this guy will likely keep his job.
Another example of the journalistic double standard. We don't report our own layoffs properly and we don't provide adequate discipline for offenders of our most sacred code.

 

Given this market, this is instant-termination stuff. No appeal. No parole.

 

Not usually. Demonstrable plagiarism is specifically listed as a summary firing offense in most Newspaper Guild contracts.

There are plenty of "worse" things you can do (most criminal offenses) which don't qualify for summary firing, but at least in the Guild contracts I've seen, plagiarism is specifically listed as a termination offense.

 

It should be. I know of one paper where they nailed three guys doing it in a year. One was fired and has never been heard from again in this business. The next one was a big time writer and the paper swept it under the rug. The rest of the staff found out months after the fact when another writer got nailed. They tried to fire him, but he threatened to sue since the other writer wasn't disciplined. He ended up getting a short suspension.

 

Damn. Why risk your career over this?

Trust me, coaching girls is a whole new ballgame - June 3, 2008
(cached version; the column has been removed from the Herald's website)

Out Of Touch With My Feminine Side - April 8, 2002

 

I got plagiarized once - by the worst writer/reporter I ever competed against. On a freaking non-revenue prep sports preview.

The person was suspended for a week and, less than a year later, had a job at a major, major metro, where said person remains today.

Kind of the beginning of the end of my disillusionment with the business side of this.

 

I've lost track how many times writers have stolen quotes that I got in one-on-one settings.

"Oh, I thought that was a pool quote..."

"Well, I wrote "said recently" so that makes it OK."

"Well, I wrote "has said" so that makes it OK."

 

How depressing to read the two columns. This guy really thought he'd get away with it because he changed Dum-Dums to Blizzards and picks to screens. What an asshole.

 

Not to say it's not terrible at any level, but how much more dumb is it to steal the column's kicker line, which is exactly the kind of thing people are going to remember?

 

I don't think that's plagiarism.

 

The cops reporter at the paper I used to work at did that all the time. She just reproduced the press releases and never got did any reporting. She did meet the byline count every week, because that is all that matters.

 

At my first stop the local TV guys used to read our stories damn near verbatim on the air. It was a P.M. so I'd go home and was sitting down eating dinner and listening to newscast, having proofed the paper about five hours previously. Started to realize it all sounded familiar then picked up the paper and started to read along with them. Got an apology, though not on the air, which to me was a "we're sorry we got caught."