Chris Powell, the JI’s managing editor, tells me his staff started to notice that same month their stories from small towns showing up in the Courant’s news pages and online. The lifted stories were mostly run-of-the-mill coverage—a synagogue merger in Manchester, a building-permit-fee increase in Hebron—and not the kind of unusual or breaking news of wide interest that the Courant might have wanted but was unable to match. It was just the grunt work, the kind for which customers might subscribe to a local paper.
Usually, but not always, the Courant would attribute the source, as in (my emphasis):
HARTFORD - A city man accused of trying to rob the same East Hartford gas station three times last summer, twice successfully, pleaded guilty in Hartford Superior Court Monday as part of a plea bargain in which he faces up to 3 ½ years in prison, the Journal Inquirer reported.
Sometimes, the Courant did not attribute the information. Sometimes it even put a byline of one of its own reporters on the stories, as if it has actually covered the event.
On August 19, Powell wrote the Courant’s Graziano a letter, saying the Courant’s print and Internet editions have been “misappropriating on a wholesale basis local stories published in the Journal Inquirer.”
“While attribution to the JI of the occasional big story we have broken may be welcome, the Courant’s frequent use of the JI’s work to report ordinary events in the towns in which our circulation overlaps is not welcome - it’s theft of copyrighted material and costly to us. Please stop this practice.”
On August 29, the JI went public with the dispute with a story headlined:
‘At best plagiarism, at worst outright theft,’ one newspaper publisher says; Courant covers towns with other papers’ reporting
(Note: the links may lead to the JI’s pay wall.)
The story also quoted news executives from the Bristol Press and New Britain Herald, (which share an owner), and the Waterbury Republican-American, saying they suspected the same thing.
The same day, Jeffrey Levine, the Courant’s “content direct” and a senior vice president, published a statement chalking up the problem to “mistakes” in the paper’s new “aggregation policy,” which he said was under review.
The problem is that Levine, who didn’t return my calls, mischaracterized what the Courant had been doing—it wasn’t “aggregation,” as he put it in the apology.
People can disagree about what aggregation is. But Levine goes to the trouble of defining it himself—”synopsizing information from other news sources, most commonly by placing a portion of the information on your web site and linking to the original story.” But the Courant was just lifting stories and rewriting them.
So, that’s a problem. What’s more, Levine’s note focused entirely on whether the taken information was attributed.
Most importantly, we discovered a mistake in our editing process when we take articles from our website to our print newspaper. We found that we inappropriately dropped the attribution or proper credit and in some cases credited ourselves with a byline to a Courant reporter. Once made aware of this mistake, The Courant took immediate steps to correct the process. It is, and has been, the policy of The Hartford Courant to attribute all information to its proper source.
But the problem is taking what doesn’t belong to you. As the JI put it tartly in a headline over a column Powell wrote in response:
Local news is costly, so Courant rips it off
Similarly, Graziano’s statement on Thursday speaks only to plagiarism, not to rewriting others’ coverage.
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.
Even now, it’s far from clear that the paper will stop using others’ content.
A Courant spokeswoman last week sent me this statement:
Last Thursday when Rich Graziano, publisher of the Courant, met with an outraged Hartford Courant newsroom, he reassured the newsroom staff: “Only journalists are concerned about this, readers don’t think it matters.”
#1 Posted by Courant Staffer, CJR on Tue 8 Sep 2009 at 10:42 PM
I'm a reader and I think it matters!
#2 Posted by Martha Healy, CJR on Wed 9 Sep 2009 at 09:06 PM
The Courant screwed up bigtime, no question about it, and it's sickening and sad to the people who work there. It's worth noting, however, that the Journal Inquirer has for years cribbed Courant stories for its print editions. And the rip-and-read is practically standard procedure at the local TV stations.
#3 Posted by Also a Courant Staffer, CJR on Fri 11 Sep 2009 at 12:50 PM
When I first started in radio-TV 50 years ago, it was standard operating procedure to get the final edition of the local newspaper and write "Today in Review" a summary of all the stories in the paper and mention the paper's name as the source. Then we got so competitive, that when the paper ran a story about the new microwave towers and what it meant to get national network TV programming live at last, the photograph of the ceremony was cropped so that the only trace of the TV station manager was his hand holding a celebratory drink.
Later, when I wrote a story about a wildcat strike at the city's largest employer, and largest TV advertiser, as a stringer for a national newspaper (couldn't write it for TV) and it wound up on the news wire, the local newspaper ran the story without any byline (mine or the wire service) and the union leader raised holy hell with the paper.
Of course, the double bonus for me was that the largest employer interviewed me for a PR job and the local paper offered me a job writing for them. There is nothing new under the sun, Horatio!
#4 Posted by Old Timer On Both Sides, CJR on Fri 11 Sep 2009 at 03:23 PM
"It's worth noting, however, that the Journal Inquirer has for years cribbed Courant stories for its print editions."
I've worked for both newspapers, and while it may have been practice to follow a breaking story by making a few calls and doing your own reporting, it was NEVER ok at EITHER workplace to outright lift copy. The comment that the JI has cribbed Courant stories for years makes me wonder what the few staffers left at HC really think these days. Are they participating in deflection because they've been brainwashed by the television signal down the hall???
#5 Posted by Former JI & Courant Staffer, CJR on Fri 11 Sep 2009 at 04:49 PM
From the story: "Does anyone think individual reporters have anything to gain from 'plagiarizing' a three-paragraph story about an interim assistant principal being named to the Irving A. Robbins Middle School in Farmington?" I'm not sure where this specific example was taken from -- however, as someone who received a press release about this minor school appointment and likely wrote about it, I sure as hell did not plagiarize. That is laughable. The problem originated with ONE staffer -- the so-called aggregator -- and while this episode is traumatic and embarrassing for the paper, it is not indicative of a widespread problem among the many true reporters still left at the Courant. Get it right.
#6 Posted by Yet another Courant staffer, CJR on Fri 11 Sep 2009 at 05:45 PM
Yet another Courant staffer: You're entirely right. See the correction above.
#7 Posted by Dean Starkman, CJR on Fri 11 Sep 2009 at 06:47 PM
The quibbling over how many people were responsible for the mis-aggregating, and how much attribution is enough, is just a legalistic effort to minimize what the Courant has done ... which is, plain and simple, plagiarism.
Has the JI plagiarized the Courant in the past? Maybe, but that's not a permission slip to do it now.
The Courant needs to come clean about this ... more than it has so far. It also needs to reverse course and stop gutting their operation. If it refuses to do so, it may as well just close up, because at this point, nothing the Courant reports can be trusted.
#8 Posted by Erstwhile Courant Reader, CJR on Sat 12 Sep 2009 at 11:21 PM
The comment posted by Courant Staffer on 9/08/09 is wrong. Graziano didn't say the quote below, it was Jeff Levine who said "readers don't think it matters."
"Last Thursday when Rich Graziano, publisher of the Courant, met with an outraged Hartford Courant newsroom, he reassured the newsroom staff: “Only journalists are concerned about this, readers don’t think it matters.”"
#9 Posted by Back Stabber, CJR on Mon 14 Sep 2009 at 01:31 PM
Yet another Courant Staffer says that the problem originated with ONE staffer -- the so-called aggregator.
If that's the case, why were six people disciplined???
The problem isn't with that single reporter, who was entry level at best and only doing what he was told. The problem is systemic in the Courant's management who believe this practice is appropriate newsgathering.
#10 Posted by Former Courant reader, CJR on Mon 14 Sep 2009 at 03:58 PM
Former Courant reader, I think it goes without saying that management is the biggest problem in this situation. However, what I assume bothers many journalists at the Courant is this assumption (due to the vagueness of the newspaper management's apology) that many bylines were tainted in this scandal. In fact, it was one byline where the plagiarism stemmed. But the others disciplined, including Jeff Levine, were editors who needed to 'pay' for this major screw-up.
#11 Posted by 285 Broad, CJR on Tue 22 Sep 2009 at 10:07 AM