For the second time this year, an incident of plagiarism has happened on the op-ed page of the Philadelphia Daily News. The previous incident happened in July, when a long time letter writer was offered a chance to contribute. He ended up plagiarizing almost his entire column.
This incident involves a city lawyer who used parts of a policy document from San
Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom as the basis for his op-ed in the paper. The Editor’s Note:
THE Daily Newsop-ed
page welcomes a variety of voices and viewpoints from the city and
beyond. The same standards for fairness and accuracy that inform the
rest of our pages apply to these pages as well. We’re very serious
about our commitment to the public trust on every page of this paper.
It
was brought to our attention that there were similarities between an
op-ed we ran this week from Vern Anastasio and a policy document by San
Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. On further investigation, it turns out
that the bulk of the op-ed appearing under Mr. Anastasio’s name came
from Mayor Newsom, without attribution. The Daily News apologizes to our readers for this. Mr. Anastasio will no longer appear on our op-ed pages.
The Web sites in question are
gavinnewsom.com/index.php?id=25 and parks.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/mayor/policy/citistat.doc.
We gave Mr. Anastasio an opportunity to respond. Here is an edited version of what he submitted:
"This
Monday, I published an op/ed piece on some of the boldest, most
innovative ideas on city service reform… I want to clarify that some
of the ideas and words in my op-ed came from the office of San
Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, whose former staff have helped me in
advancing new ideas for Philadelphia."
