The Staunton News Leader has fired a sports reporter for plagiarism and making up stories. The woman was ripping off entire paragraphs from other newspapers, apparently figuring she was the only person who’d heard of Google. #
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
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Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on
foursix and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
In 2012, Council approved a new student housing complex on West Main—now some council members are questioning whether what they were shown matches what was built. #
The Architectural Review Board has approved a bike-themed mural on West Market, below the McGuffey Art Center, although at least one member expressed concerns that it might look like the bicyclists were riding away from Charlottesville’s downtown. #
City Police Chief Tim Longo is meeting with city leaders to work on protocols regarding the use of military surplus police weapons in Charlottesville. #
A 100-year-old Colonnades resident received military honors for her service in the WWII Women’s Army Corps #
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According to the story, the reporter was a woman.
That’s funny that I described her as a him. The name — “Blair” — is genderless, but I’ll bet I just assumed that a sports writer must be male. I’ve corrected the blog entry. Thanks for pointing out my mistake, Patrick.
No problem. The only reason I noticed it is because I had read the story earlier on Friday and made the same mistake, probably for the same reason you did…
In this day and age, I wonder if that sort of thing happens more than those of us non-media types realize?
I’d venture that less noticeable forms of plagiarism – barely rewording a sentence from a press release for a brief about a city street closing, etc. – happen very often and go unnoticed and unpunished, for the most part. But something this obvious doesn’t happen often, or at least I’d like to believe that. Reading the News Leader’s article, it sounds like this woman had to go to a lot of trouble just to plagiarize – lots of googling, time spent making up fake identities, etc – why not just write her own article? Now she’s been fired, publicly humiliated and hopefully will never again write for a media outlet. How could she have thought she’d never get caught? I would like to believe that most of my former j-school alum are not that stupid.
If I were an editor and noticed that my budding journalist had great clips but seemed to stay at her desk all day and never went out or called any sources, I think that would also raise some red flags. Maybe she was just going home instead.