Should I feel any guilt whatsoever?

Amen.

 

I had this happen to me years ago. I had written a feature story and a few days later when I showed up to town where the NCAA Regional was happening, I saw another feature story about the same player with large parts of my story (which had gone out on our wire) lifted and put into the story at the top of the front of the front page of one of the top papers in that area. They even stole the quotes, which was the most telling part, because I had done the interview with a coach about the player one on one with no one else around so I knew it was stolen. No credit of any kind had been given. I made the mistake of doing nothing. And I have felt bad about that. It's a tough call but given that, as many have said, really good non-plagiarizing journalists are losing their jobs, it's a lot easier to do something about these situations these days.

 

Pretty much nails him.

I would probably feel somewhat bad, too. Nobody likes being a snitch and I wouldn't like the feeling of getting someone fired. But in no way did you do the wrong thing. I don't even agree with this chain-of-command stuff. Why pass this through the bureaucracy when it's simple and easy to deal with it directly? You're a reporter, that's what you do. You cut through bureaucracy.

Besides, fuck him.

 

I had a face-to-face conversation with someone I knew was fabricating quotes. And you know what? He lied. To my face. Did a little dance of "no, I didn't make things up" and "of course I spoke to the coach." I told him he was lying. He said he wasn't. It never got resolved because of the back-and-forth.

There was nothing to be gained from having a man-to-man conversation here. He never would have admitted to stealing your work. He would have been defensive and evasive. You did the right thing.

 

I agree with pretty much everybody who says it's his problem, not yours. But I guess a little part of me thinks it might depend at least a little on how well you knew him. If he was a media "friend," maybe a call to him might have been warranted, but that's a judgment call. He ripped you off, he got caught, he got fired. He broke one of the Big Rules of this profession, and he knew better. So unfortunately, I'm mostly on the "fuck him" side.

 

When I talked to a basketball coach after I returned from my burnout phase, he said that the guy that wrote sports while I was away had quoted him in articles even though he had never spoken to him, not even on the phone or in an e-mail. The coach didn't even know what the guy looked like.

 

Word for word.

 

As most others have said, and some as crass, fuck him.

I've dealt with a small bi-weekly ripping my stuff off for the last two years (our newsroom editor more or less refuses to do anything about it) and nothing pisses me off more. So, I know exactly how you felt when you saw your work lifted into someone else's story...and realized that they were getting paid for not doing their job.

Again, fuck them.

There are far too many people right now without jobs or about to lose jobs for some fucker to be cashing in on a job where they aren't doing work.

A tiny bit of guilt, especially if they have a family...ok. But still, fuck them.

 

Guilt? Hell, I'd be bragging about that trophy.