Paging Lynn Hoppes ...

Damn. First post is a homerun.

 

Which he did. A lot of people will be going to him asking how this happened.

 

Drip, I'm not venting. All I know is that if I was working for a news organization and did what he did I would fully expect to be immediately dismissed when found guilty. Call me naive, but I would expect that to happen to anyone else caught breaking the rules.

 

I hear ya.

 

I would have expected that after the office video and after the Sarah Phillips fiasco as well.

 

Agreed.

And I don't have a beef with Hoppes - aside from his alleged plagiarism from Wikipedia. My main gripe is that ESPN seems to disregard journalistic ethics whenever it wants.

 

I like the guy. He gave career breaks to a couple close friends of mine. But for every guy in Orlando who loved Hoppes, there was someone who hated him, usually for a pretty valid reason.

 

The ratio on that is much closer to 1:5 than it is 1:1.

 

I don't care how many people do/don't like him. ESPN can't as an employer let someone skate when there is so much documentation because it would never be able to dismiss anyone for job performance ever again.

Some places ban use of Wikipedia as even a reference source, let alone allowing you to cut and paste from it.

I wonder if Deadspin dug this up at random or if someone inside ESPN tipped them off. I have caught a few plagiarists with some freelance editing I do, but I am not clairvoyant -- something has to trigger an instinct for me to check.

 

This was my first thought. ESPN will never give Deadspin the satisfaction of uncovering something that leads to actual change. Sort of like an AD or GM who is steadfastly determined to keep a coach just to spite the local media outlets that call for that coach's head.

 

Lino, then somebody needs to drop a dime on Romensko.

 

At ESPN, that's true. That definitely was not the case in Orlando.