It's a very difficult subject and one suspended over a long continuum: everyone borrows ideas, everyone writing news in volume rewrites press releases, but for God's sake if you are writing for professional publication, at least be subtle about it. One of the great things about blogs is you can remove the veneer of originality and not pretend you wrote something you didn't - just credit and link. It's very simple.

It sounds like he should have been fired for breaking some very cardinal rules, but it sounds like he should - carefully - be given another chance elsewhere.

On the last paragraph, Eric, you got it exactly.

The editor of The Sedalia Democrat is a clumsy, paranoid, thoroughly charmless little asshole, isn't he? Throw a reporter to the wolves, and make yourself look like the patron saint of journalism in the process. He could have just fired the guy, but no, that wouldn't have stroked his own ego enough. Instead, he decided to first inform readers that a problem existed, and then publicly burn the culprit -- careful to fully expose all of his private conversations with the reporter, then shroud himself in journalistic standards. I don't excuse the reporter; what he did was wrong. But what do you say about a man who desires not to correct a problem by just firing someone, but to crush him, to just grind him into the dust? I have no respect for him at all.

All apologists for this kind of behavior are way off base. Anyone who violates the basic tenets of journalism has NO place in the industry. It is such cheaters and thieves who give reporters a bad name.
The editor was totally in the right. He owed his readers -- one of whom complained -- an explanation. If only other industries were as responsive and transparent.
The poster here (temple stark?) is obviously a friend of the disgraced reporter, but the other posts are just silly.
He "threw a reporter to the wolves"? This is absurd. The guy STOLE. He PLAGIARIZED. His job was to write, and rather he STOLE WORDS from someone else. He should be fired, blacklisted in the industry, and should find another career.
As an editor, I'd never hire the guy. In fact, I keep a list of folks who've been fired for causes like this, and I won't hire them.
There are literally thousands of young people who desperately want to do this work, and are willing to do it for very little or no money. I would go through every last one of them before I hired someone who stole material.

Yeesh. Defend someone who deserves it.

But, Garry, In Touch Weekly copy chief [yeah, Google]for a journalist things like this are the most dangerous crime .. but it's not a "dangerous" crime.

By taking such a hard stance you put them on the same level as murderers etc, at least when it comes to the hiring decision.

IN THIS PARTICULAR EXAMPLE what we learn is that we don't let him write columns. His sports reporting, as mentioned, is unquestioned.

It may sound like a soft touch, but when you take away somebody's career, what do you really do to them? Where do they go from there? I'll answer my own question, you retrain and find a new career. But you should look long and hard at the particular issue, the lies and mistakes made.

This is Kinney's first such problem. Aren't their degrees of offense? Can you put him in the same league as Blair? My clear answer is, no.

Of course, it becomes a looming factor when you're hiring, but you are wrong that there are "thousands of young people who desperately want to do this work ... for very little or no money."

It is that attitude which dooms newspapers.It shows no respect.
You're wrong except when it come to a paper such as the NY Times where they should have booted him early - because there are 1,000s who want to work there, but still not for little or no money.

Also, I'll assume, you meant hiring decisions you've had in the past.

Maybe you're just bitter because it means more work for your copy crew. How does this get past the all-knowing copy crew? (Those two sentences can, yes, be construed as a joke and/or humor interrupted :) )

And I left the "their" in up there just to torture you :)

It looks to me like he wasn't trying to fix a problem so much as he was trying to draw attention to one, and then gain as much publicity from it as possible. By burning one of his own employees at the public altar, he gets to draw attention to his own "principles." He could have just quietly fired the poor S.O.B. -- but where's the publicity in that? Where's the front-page story? Where are the Rotary Club people patting him on the back and telling him what a tough stand he took? Editors tend to have a somewhat pretentious, and often totally illusory, belief in their own integrity. This just looks to me like a self-serving charade.

Why would the editor want to draw attention to the fact that one of his employees committed fraud and that he, the editor, was complicit in the fraud? That makes no sense. It's actually quite courageous to come out and admit that you screwed up, but have taken steps to fix it. Did you ever consider that right now that editor's job is on the line, and that he already could have been for this too?

And, I know you were teasing, but it's surely NOT my job to catch plagiarism.

As for the competition for these jobs, your comments are uninformed.
I can show you the stack of over 700 resumes we received when we posted an editorial asst. job last month (paying $21,000 in the NYC area). When I worked for a small daily paper in rural Pa. 10 years ago, we got 300 resumes in three days for an UNPAID internship.
At another publication, we decided between a recent Yale grad, a recent Oberlin grad (EIC of her College paper, no less) and a recent Columbia J-School grad (among the hundreds of resumes we got) to fill an entry-level editor's position that paid $23,000. This was 1999, the height of the economic boom.
Young people absolutely are desparate to do this work.

So if your pal can't do the job honestly and competently, and without STEALING, there are plenty of folks who would love to. I'm not sure how that statement shows a lack of respect or whom I'm supposed to be disrespecting.

And saying this is his first problem is not exectly correct. The article says that dozens of his sports columns and other columns were lifted.

OFF-TOPIC:
Temple, as a courtesy to people on blogger lists like this, I try not to pry into their personal lives via google. If we wanted everyone to know who we were and what we do, we'd use our real names here. I personally don't really care, but some might. And if they thought people were gonna google them every time they opined, maybe some wouldn't opine. I don't presume to tell you what to do, but it's something to think about.

I can see why Temple and Rodney feel the way they do, but I have to go with Clubhouse Cancer on this one. If anything, the Howell Raines / Jayson Blair debacle dictated that this editor really had no choice but to publish what he did. To simply quietly fire the guy would have seemed like a coverup, and that would have called the integrity of the entire paper into question. Only by acting swiftly and decisively could the editor halt what could otherwise have been a festering controversy (as with the NY Times).

That his letter seems too-explicit is unfortunate, and that it seems like he is covering his own hind end is also unfortunate. I challenge anyone to write a column giving the appropriate level of detail that the situation demands and not have it coming out sounding similarly defensive, though.

Template, I'm sorry that you friend turned out to be so dishonest, but my sister-in-law makes about $15/hour at Sonic Drive-In, maybe he should consider a career there. Most papers aren't going to want to touch a known plagiarist, at least for a year or two.

"Template" - he he

Philip, I have already said, twice I think, that the firing was the right decision. And I have not said that the letter in the paper was over the top. I do tend to think that, but in these times I definitely understand why the editor did that and I would have done the same thing.

As for the hires and the numbers of people dying to work at a newspaper - I'll go with that. Maybe "desperation" is an East Coast thing. :) Maybe that explains why I'm currently getting so many apps from the East Coast, though I'm in Arizona.

There are many resumes out there, that doesn't mean we as hirers should treat them as desperate and pay them the lowest wage possible that someone will tolerate.

And, lastly, I've never understood people's fear of Googlism. It's out there anyway. With Garry, he was talking like somebody in the know, so I wanted to know if he was in the know.

And he's with Media Bistro as a host/sponsor so he's not exactly a shrinking violet, now is he. But I think he was talking more generally.

I don't and don't care to look up everybody who posts a comment. But I could. That's the reality. People have even written stories about it.

Google my name and you used to get a couple of dumb informed comments at other blogs. Now you get my Web site and a couple of Jewish temple listings. Oh and I just found out when you search for my name in quotes, blogcritics shows up quite frequently. Great.

Clubhouse -- It makes perfect sense. That editor will receive nothing but compliments, I'll bet you anything. I see nothing courageous about his stance at all. It is clear to me that he was using the reporter to draw attention to his own sense of personal integrity; and it looks like you swallowed it whole.

I think you and Philip are both way overreacting in light of the Jayson Blair controversy.

I used to work for a few weeklies and saw people get fired -- me among them, as a matter of fact -- but never for plagiarism. Usually the cause was poor reporting, in which case the culprit was shown the door; there was no big whoop about it, none of this "we apologize to our readers" shit, no "our honesty is all we have" crap.

I frankly don't know what would have been done in a plagiarism case beyond a firing -- would we have gone back over all the stories and vetted them for truth? Or just said "Hit the road, pal" and take stock in the perfectly safe assumption that the world will forget?

And in case you're wondering, I wasn't fired for poor reporting. I was fired because the editor disliked strong opinions or attitudes contrary to his own -- a trait entirely in keeping with his species, by the way, along with the kind of overblown sense of personal importance demonstrated by the man from Sedalia.

It staggers the imagination that so many people want to write for newspapers.

Sorry, Temple. I got it right once and muscle-memory took over the second time. FWIW (nothing) I was a little bothered by the googling too. I've made a conscious decision to use my full name here and just about everywhere else, so I'm fair game - you can search the web and find stupid things I've written as far back as 1994. Maybe earlier on Google Groups. But Clubhouse Cancer deliberately chose a pseudonym and may not have realized his email addy would show up on the page, so while I don't fault you for looking it up, I understand his discomfort a little. I might even offer to edit that info out of the comments, but after the brouhaha that erupted elsewhere on the net over edited comments, I don't think I would even if you gave your permission now.

And Rodney, that's how life works. While I might have considered editing a comment quietly (with notice, of course), after a big stink erupted last week about it on other sites, I am far more careful now. Similarly, the Jayson Blair scandal has focused the attention of America on the issue of plagiarism, so it would be foolish of this editor to act in this case as he might have a year ago.

Still, plagiarism is different from simple incompetence. Journalists tend to take themselves very seriously (too seriously) and plagiarism is about as severe a sin as is possible in that field.

Frankly, I'm not trying to be insulting when I say that most daily news papers place a lot more emphasis on accuracy in reporting that most weekly papers (which tend to be more entertainment-oriented overall, though not necessarily the ones you worked at).

People will react to the editor's column however they wish. Possible reactions include: (1) Yours - that the editor is trying to curry favor (2) Mine - that the editor is trying to cover his butt (3) That the editor is truly an honest man who is shocked - shocked I tell you - that such a thing could happen in his paper (4) None of the above. People's reactions say more about the people than the author, though.

I guess I can understand the Google distinction.
Again though, his name is in his e-mail when you click on "Clubhouse Cancer." If he's trying to be anon, he's not trying very hard It's my understanding you have to physically type your e-mail in at least once for it to appear, letter by letter.

But, lesson learned on my part. I won't go googling (or spelunking); though I am a journalist and always have been someone who looks to find out things. We're out here, so beware if you want to be anon at a particular site and don't type in your e-mail if it has your name in it.

Next time I'll let others do the fingerwork themselves if they desire.

ALSO

>>Frankly, I'm not trying to be insulting when I say that most daily news papers place a lot more emphasis on accuracy in reporting that most weekly papers (which tend to be more entertainment-oriented overall, though not necessarily the ones you worked at).

Phillip I think I know where you're going with this but I think you mischaracterize "accuracy." In a lot of the stories weeklies produce accuracy isn't as important, in that it's not going to get you sued if you make a mistake.

((In many stories weeklies produce the possibility is there, though. Even in features. I've got a good story there I'll share at another time.))

But accuracy, per se, in getting people's names right and facts right and so forth still matters, deeply. There's such a thing as credibility and reputation with newpsapers. There's such a thing as pride in your work and, occasionally, pride from a community that you are their news source.

BTW I've contacted Mr. Kinney and have told him despite his "lapse of reason" I would be a reference for him. He said, "that would be helpful."

Is THAT wrong?

Temple - Of course it isn't wrong. His record speaks for itself, and your reference is good for what you know about him. It might be enough to another editor editor somewhere to take a chance on him, and then he can get back in and keep his nose clean and you'll have done A Good Thing(tm).

You're right that accuracy matters at all levels, and I knew I was treading on thin ice there, because certainly all weekly paper journalists take pride in their work, and many of them win awards, and so on. Nevertheless, I still believe that on balance, the standard at the majority of daily rags is probably a little bit higher than the standard at most weekly rags. There are exceptions, of course. :)

And I hear you on the googling. Heck, I've got *no* objection to the googling whatsoever. But I can understand why he was a little anxious that you published the results for everybody else to read. Like I said, he may not have realized his email would by shown - some comment pages don't. In fact, it's a change I've been considering for BlogCritics in the future.

I hope your friend finds work. And I hope that he actually does it all himself this time. :)