Orlando

Myself, I'd like to see The Great Lynn Hoppes come into the room again and lay this one out for us all, top to bottom.

I can understand why he hasn't jumped in here yet and explained things yet -- he's that kind of guy. Personally, I don't respect anyone who lies to me repeatedly, and I could tell you stories about that but I won't........'Nuff said, move on.............

With great power comes great responsibility. Somehow -- in newspapers, of all places -- this mandate gets shoved under the rug, and sometimes only for the Christmas bonus or whatever these exalted managers are collecting, at your personal cost.

I do think Van McKenzie would have stood up for Steve Elling, to a fault, if the arrangements were above-board.

Looks like the changes in Orlando are coming pretty fast.

I don't mean to be rude, but then again, sometimes it's better to be rude.

 

This is a much more interesting feud than Supershadow vs. John D. Villarreal. And slightly more relevant too.

And Montezuma's Revenge: I was wondering the same thing, the potential of his own postings to hurt Mr. Elling's future job prospects. Would be curious as to the answers.

 

I truly hope it doesn't hurt Elling.

He does really good work. I like him a lot, but I can also see where he could easily get crossways with bosses and editors. He is, uh, on the tactless side -- something that doesn't bother me, but it does get under the skin of others.

Hoppes included, I imagine.

Those calling for Hoppes to get on the board and explain his side need to get a few clues, though. He can't. Besides it being uncoming for a high editor to get in a message board pissing match, the Sentinel legal department would have his head on a platter.

 

Are you crazy?

One wrong syllable, and Tribune would have him out with the bathwater, too.

 

Has the Sentinel issued a statement on the personnel move yet, even something boilerplate such as "no comment"?

 

Oh, please. I'm with SF_Express on this one. It's easy to be holy here, but anyone who actually bothered to read the particulars -- rather than, say, toss around labels like "plagiarist" as if they were Italian ambassadorships -- would know that this is one of the more ridiculous "scandals" ever to have been bruited hereabouts. Even more absurd is that Orlando Magazine has now taken to calling this "the notorious case of [NAME REDACTED]," clearly inspired by the collected works of Erle Stanley Gardner. Where, exactly, is this notorious? In the mind of Orlando Magazine's publisher? In the office of some J-school prof who wiped the sherry off his moustache and decided to take his shiny new blog for a spin?

 

excellent post janie.

so much self-righteous bullshit: "Off With His Head!"
death penalty for first offense. nothing in between.

and the dirty 'p' word, my god, you'd think it was murder first degree.
it's rarely black and white - no matter what the ideologues say - nobody owns an idea, nobody owns specific words or phrases - it's usually gray and blurry

 

Bigger picture:

I'm not going to make a judgment about Elling specifically, because I don't know him or Lynn Hoppes.

But something strikes me as strange about this whole thing, and that's that Elling had the approval -- or at least thought he had the approval -- to rewrite the information he gathered as a Sentinel reporter and sell it as a freelancer.

That's just wrong. That information belonged, or belongs, to the Sentinel. It sounds as if Elling ran the freelance gigs past his supervisor, Van McKenzie, and he said, "Yeah, whatever, as long as you did it for us first."

Unfortunately, McKenzie can't defend himself, but that strikes me as outrageously careless -- McKenzie should have known Elling, or any other writer in that situation, might have gotten into trouble.

Freelance gigs by staff writers are slippery deals -- I know. I think there's a cautionary tale here: If you're contracted to do freelance work, don't do it on company time and do original reporting.

If I read Elling's post correctly, he got into trouble because he did freelance work for a company that later turned into a conflict of interest. I wonder if there would have been the same commotion if Elling had done separate reporting.

And one other thing: Jemele Hill, everything is not all about you.

 

Again... no one sees a problem with Elling plagiarizing his own material for another publication?

 

I don't.

If the second publisher knows its reworked, and is still willing to pay for it, I don't see the problem.

Do you see a problem with photographers reselling images?

 

I find it lazy, at the very least.

I would rather his Orlando Sentinel story re-ran, saying at the end that this piece originally ran in the OS.

Slightly re-working it, to me, oozes dishonesty to the readership.

 

If he was freelancing for magazines, though, it would need to be slightly reworked and padded some. The articles would have to be much longer for a magazine, and I'm getting the impression he rewrote for magazines.