Orlando

[Moderator1]

33 items? If that number is accurate, well, wow. Just wow.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

33 items? If that number is accurate, well, wow. Just wow.

Those damn Northwestern grads...

 

[Dan Rydell]

Personally, I'd like to see what Lynn Hoppes has to say about this one.

Long-time reader, first-time poster. That's how much I wanna see what Mr. Hoppes has to say.

 

[Ellis Redding]

Personally, I'd like to see what Lynn Hoppes has to say about this one.

Long-time reader, first-time poster. That's how much I wanna see what Mr. Hoppes has to say.

Lynn will NEVER post on this thread. Maybe if you levy this accusation on another one, he will. But I'm sure he wants nothing to do with this particular one.

 

[sartysnopes]

Personally, I think it's ridiculous to expect an associate managing editor of a newspaper to explain himself on a message board in which people regularly curse and some people have logged thousands of posts while on the clock.

I'll tell you what that reminds me of: people who post on the completely ridiculous sports message boards us journalists hate because they spread gossip and innuendo rather than operate on the principles on which we base our careers.

If you want this to be a serious discussion of journalism ethics, perhaps its time to stop having threads titled "To turn down or not to turn down a menage a trois?" or "WHY THE HELL?". Maybe then people who matter will want to participate in the discussion.

Just a thought.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

We'll stop having those threads the day after your paper stops printing anna nicole and brittney news.

 

[Moderator1]

That's why we went to separate boards like this. It works (mostly, sometimes).

 

[Moderator1]

And while the 33 instances is a number that raises my eyebrows, I have another question.
Aren't others writing for programs? Didn't David Hyde have something in the Super Bowl program? What about the Masters program - doesn't it include contributions from beat folks?
Where is the line?

We can write for preview mags and a couple of Web sites, with prior permission. We can't do programs.
Others? What is the policy, who polices it, how is it enforced?

 

[Mizzougrad96]

There are a lot of writers who write for programs. I know a ton who do it under a pen name or with no byline at all...

Where things get dicey is when the debate starts about "writing for competitors" because there are sports editors who might argue that a newspaper competes with AOL, ESPN.com and Sportsline because of the Internet. When I started freelancing regularly for a website and doing regular radio, I asked for permission by email and kept the emails that were sent back that said I could do them.

 

[Boom_70]

And while the 33 instances is a number that raises my eyebrows, I have another question.
Aren't others writing for programs? Didn't David Hyde have something in the Super Bowl program? What about the Masters program - doesn't it include contributions from beat folks?
Where is the line?

We can write for preview mags and a couple of Web sites, with prior permission. We can't do programs.
Others? What is the policy, who polices it, how is it enforced?

The moral of this story:

Never Assume Anything.

Get it in writing

It applies to any business.

 

[boots]

The biggest moral is COVER THY ASS!!!!

 

[Boom_70]

The biggest moral is COVER THY ASS!!!!

specialy if boots has your back

 

[Ike Broflovski]

Being only a partial plagiarist is like being half-pregnant.

You're either present other people's words, ideas and information the proper way, or you do it the wrong way -- and plagiarize. You'd think they covered this at Northwestern.

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?

As the guy who wrote the book that Emily Badger lifted 33 items from, it was a pretty crappy thing to have happen to.

I mean, this was my hometown paper. I've read it since I was in high school and regularly kicked its ass when I was at the Business Journal. It's not like the paper didn't know who I was or where to reach me. I was the first reporter covering sports business in Orlando as a full-time beat. I wrote for the Sports Business Journal on a regular basis. My office at the Business Journal was two blocks from the Sentinel's offices.

I had articles about my book in Money Magazine, Newsweek, Houston Cronicle, Boston Globe and many more. All of which attributed ideas to me. And when I picked up the morning sports section of the local paper for the annual spring training guide, there are 33 instances where a word was changed from my book. Not vague discrepancies, but instances where only a word was changed.

I haven't said much about it in the past, because she was relatively new to journalism at the time. Besides, it didn't cost me anything other than some free press and it wouldn't have made me feel any better by having a young journalist be on the unemployment line. The Sentinel wrote a clarification, and that was fine by me.

But, when you say that there was nothing to this and it wasn't "notorious," think about how you would feel if someone took something:
* you had been planning for over a decade
* you worked a year on
* you spent several thousand dollars reporting on
* you list as one of the proudest accomplishments of your life
and simply changed a few words and passed it off as their own.

Alan Byrd
Author
Florida Spring Training, Your Guide to the Grapefruit League

Here's a question for Alan or anyone else to answer: Are there any legal ramifications to this? Could Alan, or someone who has been blatantly plagiarized, sue the plagiarist for lost income? I don't know the answer.

In some ways, the incident did cost Alan something. This was something he'd clearly invested time and money in. I don't know exactly how anyone could quantify this, but it seems the Sentinel made money for selling newspapers containing stolen information. Maybe there were readers out there who saw the book at the local Barnes & Noble and said, "I've read this stuff already. I don't need to buy this." Lost business for Alan.

I don't know anything more about this than what I've read here, but it sounds as if the writer made an unintentional mistake. I'm pretty sure that if the editors would have known that she'd lifted the stuff, they would have flagged it. It's possible that Alan might have let the Sentinel use some of the information as long as he was credited for it.

I've never been plagiarized -- at least, not that I know of -- but I'd imagine it must be sickening. I'm wondering if Alan, or future Alans, have any recourse.

 

[Boom_70]

Was interested in the Badger case and found this via Google from www.maynardije.org.

I can tell you the response would have been much stronger at most places I've worked.

It also makes you wonder why they'd look the other way on this, but be so quick to cut a veteran writer loose for seems like an easily correctable mistake.

Orlando Plagiarism Charges Escape Much Attention

Another case involving plagiarism allegations, this time involving a young white reporter at the Orlando Sentinel, seems to have flown under the radar, or, as one black reporter at the paper fears, been "swept under the rug."

"Emily Badger is living the dream of many a Medill School of Journalism student: fresh out of college, she's a general assignment sports reporter for the Orlando Sentinel. Idyllic, really -- except for those pesky charges of plagiarism," wrote Torea Frey, public editor ot the Daily Northwestern at Badger's alma mater.

"Badger, Medill '03, who served as The Daily's managing editor during Winter Quarter 2003, faced allegations by Jim Clark in a May 2004 issue of Orlando Magazine that she lifted excerpts from a book for a piece published in the Sentinel's spring training guide.

"On its face Clark's evidence seems damning: A simple comparison of sentences from each work was enough to make me second guess the woman who was my boss for three months. Some examples, according to the Clark article, follow."

The piece continued:

". . . Although the Sentinel printed a clarification listing several omitted sources, it is debatable the extent to which this situation points to a major deficiency on Badger's part. However, Badger does agree that the experience taught her the importance of accurate, fair reporting.

"'Sorry to say it's a pretty unsexy scandal,' she wrote. 'If you want to learn anything from this case, it's this: Sports departments do a notoriously poor job of sourcing. We run national notebooks (chocked) full of (Associated Press) info, we reprint quotes we assume came from public-domain press conferences . . .

"'This is a pretty unhealthy culture that sets many sports departments apart from the rest of their papers -- and it's something my editors have learned a lot about in the last couple of months, at my expense,'" the story continued.

The Orlando Magazine piece faulted the newspaper.

Referring to Alan Byrd, author of the book in question, and Manning Pynn, the Sentinel's public editor, Clark wrote that:

"Byrd says that Pynn called back and said the paper would publish a 'clarification.' That?s a sort of half step, somewhere between admitting nothing and admitting that something wrong had happened. It leaves it to the reader to guess whether it was just a mistake (perhaps the credits got left off merely by accident?). Byrd says he was satisfied. Still, it took more than two weeks before the 'clarification' was published. It didn?t mention Badger, and simply said that the spring training preview should have 'credited some research' to Byrd?s book. Apparently, Badger didn?t simply rely on Byrd?s book-?the correction went on to detail a laundry list of 18 other sources Badger had used but failed to credit. The correction didn?t mention anything about the similarities between what the various authors had produced and what Badger wrote."

Pynn told Journal-isms today that "this wasn't really plagiarism. She rewrote what looked like his thoughts."

The public editor said that after the correction was published, "Alan Byrd thought that was a very good resolution." The reporter "was admonished. She understood that and we moved on."

Then he added:
"The Sentinel distinguishes between corrections and clarifications. The newspaper corrects errors of fact, misspellings or proper names, anything that is demonstrably incorrect. It clarifies anything that does not present incorrect information but could leave readers with a mistaken impression.

"Jim Clark's article/column in Orlando magazine seems to make an issue of the Sentinel not having corrected the sourcing of the information the newspaper published about Spring Training baseball parks, but the information was not incorrect. The omission of the list of sources for that information likely left readers with the impression that the Sentinel collected that information, which it did not. So the newspaper clarified where it had gleaned that information.

"The information used in thumbnail descriptions of the ballparks, though, was not plagiarized, as in lifting something verbatim. Several of the descriptions used phrasing similar to that in the Byrd book, and Emily Badger acknowledged having drawn her information from that and other sources -- which the Sentinel subsequently credited.

"As for ethics training, we hold regular sessions on that topic for the staff as part of our in-house Newsroom University."

"That’s not the way we do things around here."

 

[Ike Broflovski]

Thanks for posting that, Jersey. The Sentinel's public response was insufficient, to say the least. Printing that as a "clarification" was arrogant and misleading -- as if identifying the source of the information would make the plagiarism problem go away.

I'm particularly bothered by Ms. Badger's quote. She seems to blame her sports department -- and, even worse, sports departments in general -- for this. She's saying the standards are lower at the Sentinel and everywhere else, so it's no wonder the story got in. What an arrogant little ****; she doesn't know that's true anywhere else. It's clear she thinks she's the victim in this. Christ, she's lucky to even have a job.

 

[Montezuma's Revenge]

The biggest moral is COVER THY ASS!!!!

specialy if boots has your back

Boom turns on a fastball in his wheel house.

 

[Simon_Cowbell]

Thanks for posting that, Jersey. The Sentinel's public response was insufficient, to say the least. Printing that as a "clarification" was arrogant and misleading -- as if identifying the source of the information would make the plagiarism problem go away.

I'm particularly bothered by Ms. Badger's quote. She seems to blame her sports department -- and, even worse, sports departments in general -- for this. She's saying the standards are lower at the Sentinel and everywhere else, so it's no wonder the story got in. What an arrogant little ****; she doesn't know that's true anywhere else. It's clear she thinks she's the victim in this. Christ, she's lucky to even have a job.

As prominently as she used Byrd's material, she should have had that referenced in the body text of what she wrote.

I find her response infuriating.

Is Badger a married name... was she formally Emily Nipps?

 

[Ace]

Thanks for posting that, Jersey. The Sentinel's public response was insufficient, to say the least. Printing that as a "clarification" was arrogant and misleading -- as if identifying the source of the information would make the plagiarism problem go away.

I'm particularly bothered by Ms. Badger's quote. She seems to blame her sports department -- and, even worse, sports departments in general -- for this. She's saying the standards are lower at the Sentinel and everywhere else, so it's no wonder the story got in. What an arrogant little ****; she doesn't know that's true anywhere else. It's clear she thinks she's the victim in this. Christ, she's lucky to even have a job.

I didn't like her quotes, but I agree with them to an extent.

* Sports departments often print items -- especially in weekly notebooks -- which the reporter did not gather and are not properly sourced. And this isn't considered a problem at all most places.

* It was foolish to give this assignment to a recent grad with presumably very little experience at any spring training park and expect her to turn in a detailed account without checking in with her often to see how she was progressing and where she was getting her information.

Now, you give that to a veteran who can tell where the nicest parks are, best hot dogs, best place for autograph hunting etc., you assume it's from experience. Where is some intern going to gather that information?

 

[nobody_important]

Thanks for posting that, Jersey. The Sentinel's public response was insufficient, to say the least. Printing that as a "clarification" was arrogant and misleading -- as if identifying the source of the information would make the plagiarism problem go away.

I'm particularly bothered by Ms. Badger's quote. She seems to blame her sports department -- and, even worse, sports departments in general -- for this. She's saying the standards are lower at the Sentinel and everywhere else, so it's no wonder the story got in. What an arrogant little ****; she doesn't know that's true anywhere else. It's clear she thinks she's the victim in this. Christ, she's lucky to even have a job.

As prominently as she used Byrd's material, she should have had that referenced in the body text of what she wrote.

I find her response infuriating.

Is Badger a married name... was she formally Emily Nipps?

No... they're two different people.

 

[Comma Chameleon]

I don't know anyone involved, but I do have one thought I'd like to share. As someone whose work has been lifted many times by other writers on my beat, including the use of quotes from one-on-one interviews, all I can say is this ...

Sports departments do a notoriously poor job of sourcing. We run national notebooks (chocked) full of (Associated Press) info, we reprint quotes we assume came from public-domain press conferences . . . This is a pretty unhealthy culture that sets many sports departments apart from the rest of their papers

... is something that, if it were to appear in a journalism text book, would be widely received as an accurate, inarguable statement. Just because someone said it to deflect attention from his or her mistakes, it doesn't make it untrue.