Everett Herald says sports columnist lifted passages from SI

This is horrible. How are people this stupid in a columnist position?

I hope this clown is blacklisted from every paper in the country.

 

Make mistakes?
A mistake is when you're supposed to be going 65 and you go 75.
A mistake is when you judge that your wife won't mind if you spend another half-hour at the 19th hole.
When you plagiarize someone, you're not making a mistake. You meant to make take a shortcut. You took a shortcut. You did exactly as you intended to do. No "mistake."

"I'm sorry judge. I didn't mean to embezzle $500,000 from my employer. It just happened. It was a mistake."

 

During my journalism career, I have made a lot of mistakes.

I've gotten a score wrong (once).
I've gotten a mascot name wrong (once).
I've made spelling errors.
I've made grammatical errors.
I've referred to a stadium by a name it hasn't used in three years.

I've never accidentally plagiarized anybody. That's a bullshit excuse.

 

I have known John Sleeper for nearly 20 years and have worked with him on two seperate occasions. He's a very good man and a talented writer who has endured more than his fair share of personal hardships.

This hits me in the gut like a death in the family. I have no idea what might have driven him to this, but I can only imagine it was something serious.

I understand the knee-jerk reaction is to call him an asshole, etc. I can assure you he is not. If you were a friend in need, he'd be the first person to reach out to you. I'm going to pick up the phone right now and do the same for John.

 

Most of us have dealt with personal hardship at some point in our careers. A lot of times it can have a significant impact on the job we do on certain nights.

There is never an excuse to plagiarize.

It doesn't mean he's a bad person, but it does mean he's a bad journalist.

 

What if you have a photographic memory? Maybe you just don't realize you're ripping off a whole story.

 

What if it was all a dream?

 

Exactly.
(But how do you get a mascot name wrong?)

 

Did he want to get out of the office before noon?

 

You know, this is one of those things I always have thought about. There are those pieces you just bang out in what seems like a second — 20 inches in 30 minutes and it's just (in the writer's mind) pure gold. There are those wonderful times when it almost seems too easy ... like you were just taking dictation. I guess it would be like a shooter just feeling like he could throw it up from halfcourt and couldn't miss. Was it really inspiration or was it cribbing something deep from my mind that I actually had read five years earlier? Not excusing anything here. Sleeper is done as a columnist and perhaps deeper than that. But I've always wondered if such a thing is possible. I'd like to think it's not.

 

That's my fear: Having something I read a long time ago imbedded in the memory and unknowingly incorporating something eerily similar into copy. Doesn't apply in the Sleeper case, because he's making up a set of life experiences he didn't have.

 

I once wrote an advance on an upcoming game between the team I was covering and West Virginia -- except I referred to West Virginia as Virginia Tech in every reference throughout the entire story. And nobody caught it.

So I completely understand how Mizzou could get a mascot wrong.