Yet Another Writer In Trouble For Plagiarizing Rick Reilly
Friday, August 01, 2008
Back in early June, a writer from the Province in Canada was caught poaching quotes from an old Rick Reilly column. At the time I wondered why someone would as dumb as to plagiarize from someone as widely read as Reilly, but apparently Herald writer John Sleeper didn't get the memo. Via The Seattle Times....
The Herald of Everett has suspended a sports writer for a column that included material taken from Sports Illustrated.Just amazing. You would think that with the invention of the Internet and the ease of finding information that plagiarism would happen less, but I guess not. It's also interesting that people don't really get fired for this offense anymore. Back in the day they would have been humiliated and ostracized from the writing business, but now it's a slap on the wrist and they're back to work in no time.
The Herald said parts of the June 3 column by John Sleeper, "Trust me, coaching girls is a whole new ballgame," describing the travails of a girls' basketball coach, were taken from a 2002 piece in the magazine.
The Sports Illustrated column, "Out of Touch with My Feminine Side," was written by Rick Reilly and was printed in a book of Reilly's columns, "Hate Mail from Cheerleaders," which was published in 2007.
The paper said Sleeper has been suspended for an in-depth review of the matter. It said the deception violated journalistic standards and The Herald's commitment to maintaining community trust.
Everett Herald columnist suspended for plagiarism (Seattle Times)
(Thanks to SS for the tip.)
10 Comments:
Couldn't he have stolen from someone better?
I mean, I liked Reilly a while back, but he's been mailing it in for years.
It's lazy journalism, if you can even call it journalism.
Stealing material from Reilly is not the biggest sports crime of the day.
/Michigan ranked #24 in the preseason rankings
As a Michigan fan let me just say....you're right. That's insane.
Michigan was only ranked in the Top 25 to make the impending upset by Miami of Ohio in the Big House look better than it actually would be.
/gmoney
I think you mean the impending "upset" by Utah, but yes, that's probably close to accurate.
spartandan - gmoney just about guaranteed a Redhawks victory over Michigan.
Is it really 'plagiarism' when the source is also unoriginal?
GMoney is awesome. He's the Gerald Wallace of the blogosphere: not many folks know of his greatness, but if he was in a bigger market he'd be a star.
Oh, and what's with these writers stealing from Reilly. Next thing you know, columnists are going to ape Simmons. I think I just threw up in my mouth a little (lulz x 1000000)
I bet nobody gets caught poaching quotes from Reilly's ESPN.COM columns. After hitting a half court shot with the first one there have been a lot of air balls.