Six people at the Hartford Courant, including Content Manager Jeff Levine and Editor Naedine Hazell, have been disciplined by Tribune for their role in plagiarizing material from their competitors’ newspapers. The nature of the discipline is not yet clear, but apparently follows from an inquiry by Tribune Executive Vice President Bob Gremillion.
Additionally, according to an internal memo from the publisher, the following letter will appear on courant.com and tomorrow’s edition of the newspaper.
The Hartford Courant is America’s oldest continuously published
newspaper. We’ve been in business for 245 years. We’ve earned a
reputation for integrity and we take it very seriously. Throughout
our history we have served the community by highlighting wrongdoing
and violations of ethics when we find them. It is only right that we
focus the same light on ourselves when we are wrong.
So, it’s incumbent upon me as publisher to tell you that we failed to
meet our own standards and, as we would with anyone else, we are
flagging it, calling it wrong and taking action.
In short, after an extensive internal review, we have determined that
over the last several weeks The Courant plagiarized the work of some
of our competitors. This was not our intent, but it is in fact what
happened. We are taking corrective action to prevent it from happening
again. We have also disciplined the individuals involved.
There is nothing more sacred to a newspaper than its credibility. It
is my responsibility to point out our ethical violations and tell you
that this newspapers’ staff and I are deeply sorry. We apologize to
our readers, competitors and advertisers.
The Courant wants to assure its readers and news staff that we
vigorously subscribe to strict journalistic ethics and to maintaining
and achieving lasting credibility. We know that there is nothing more
important to a newspaper.
Rich Graziano
CEO, President & Publisher Hartford Courant
Senior Vice President Tribune Broadcasting
General Manager TIC/TXX
Here is the text of a note Jeff Levine and Naedine Hazell sent to the staff:
To the newsroom:
Thank you for your patience during the week-long inquiry into the
charges of plagiarism against The Courant.
Most importantly, we take responsibility and apologize.
It is and has always been our policy to offer proper attribution. Over
the last few weeks, The Courant carried several news stories in which
the original news source attributions were removed and credit was
given to a Courant staffer. This was plagiarism. It happened on our
watch. Disciplinary action for those involved, including ourselves,
has been taken today. We’ve put procedures in place to insure that
these mistakes never happen again.
Jeff and Naedine
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If only everyone had a Gump-like knack for being at the scene of every event — in this case every embarrassing episode and disastrous decision at the Courant — and walking away as fresh as a daisy.
What a shame. That’s my reaction, over, and over, when I look at the Courant’s leadership and product these days. What a shameful, sorry loss.
Speaking of credibility, when do we get the apology for Gombossygate?
What will the aggregation department do now, short of hiring back some of the laid-off reporters? As costly and troublesome as they can be, efforts to do without them backfired. Replacing them with a crew of “aggregators” seemed like a chapter out of “Oliver Twist”:
“When the breakfast was cleared away the merry old gentleman and the two boys played at a very curious and uncommon game, which was performed in this way. The merry old gentleman, placing a snuff-box in one pocket of his trousers, a note-case in the other, and a watch in his waistcoat pocket, with a guard-chain round his neck; and sticking a mock diamond in his shirt, buttoned his coat tight round him, and putting his spectacle-case and handkerchief in his pockets, trotted up and down the room with a stick, in imitation of the manner in which old gentlemen walk around the streets any hour in the day. … At such times he would look constantly round him for fear of thieves, and keep slapping all his pockets in turn, to see that he hadn’t lost anything, in such a very funny and natural manner, that Oliver laughed till the tears ran down his face. All this time the two boys followed him closely about, getting out of his sight so nimbly, every time he turned round, that it was impossible to follow their motions. At last, the Dodger trod upon his toes, or ran upon his boot accidentally while Charley Bates stumbled up against him behind; and in that one moment they took from him, with the most extraordinary rapidity, snuff-box, note-case, watch-guard, shirt-pin, pocket-handkerchief–even the spectacle case. If the old gentleman felt a hand in any one of his pockets, he cried out where it was; and then the game began all over again.”
Dave and others at the Courant — As I promised, I looked into your concerns that SPJ singled out all the Courant staffers with their press release this week. That didn’t make sense to me so I contacted HQ and I have a better explanation as to what happened since I’m new on the job, my first week.
SPJ subscribes to a data base that contains the names, titles and contact information for thousands of journalists all over the country. Our releases can then be used more specificially, for perhaps travel editors or political writers. We can also instruct the data base to search via a geographic area. That is what we did in this case.
The barometer we read showed there were a number of people upset with this in Connecticut, so the decision was made by our staff to send the release to journalists in that state who appeared in our database. That is how so many of the Courant staffers received the press release.
SPJ did not intentionally single our your paper’s staff for this, but it was directed to many journalists there whom we felt would have an interest in this matter.
I apologize that this has created ill feelings and was preceived as an insult. It wasn’t our intention to rub salt into wounds.
Thanks for your interaction with me on this matter and I wish you and the staff a sense of peace in the coming days as this issue ends.
Regards,
Kevin Smith
“Gombossygate?”….please….we know the real deal there!
I’m curious what disciplinary measures were taken. Plagiarism, the mortal sin of journalism, normally results in immediate termination. Be that as it may, I’d hate to see any of the Aggregate-gate Six lose their job because they were merely taking orders from a Levine, Hazell or someone else in upper management.
Graziano’s, “Call to arms letter” is interesting considering he knows nothing about journalistic practice or integrity. Not my words -his own -admitting he knows nothing about news.
Funny