A sports writer from the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester, Massachusetts, has been hit with allegations of plagiarism. According to AP, he has been “sent home from the Super Bowl after he allegedly plagiarized parts of his column from Sports Illustrated.” (Are we the only ones who think that sentence makes it sound like he got kicked out of summer camp for getting caught in the girls’ cabin after curfew?)
The story was picked up by well over 60 papers (the key parts of it are excerpted below). And here’s (most of) the correction that the paper ran:
Substantial portions of a column originally written by Peter King and published Jan. 24 on the Sports Illustrated Web site were printed Jan. 30 in the Sunday Telegram under the byline of Ken Powers, a staff member of the Telegram & Gazette.
AP Story tidbits:
The Telegram & Gazette of Worcester, the third-largest daily paper in New England, published a correction Wednesday about the column written by Ken Powers. (REGRET NOTE: It appears that the paper is in fact the fifth largest in New England.) The newspaper also said that it was conducting an investigation.
“We apologize to our readers and to Sports Illustrated,” the newspaper said.
Questions arose about the Sunday column after a reader tipped off the paper to similarities between columns written by Powers and Sports Illustrated’s Peter King. Both columns were about the success of the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles, who play in Sunday’s Super Bowl, after both teams lost their first games of the 2003 season. Three passages from Powers’ column were nearly identical to King’s story.
