Romenesko spotted this apology to readers from the executive editor of the The Daily Herald in Everett, Washington:
On June 3, this newspaper carried a column describing the travails of a girls’ basketball coach. Editors are deeply disturbed to learn that parts of the column were taken from a 2002 piece that appeared in Sports Illustrated.
This deception violates The Herald’s commitment to earning and maintaining community trust. It also violates journalistic standards: It is never acceptable to take credit for work that is not our own. We must be forthright about the matters we report as well as the sources of our information.
Herald sports writer John Sleeper has acknowledged that his column, “Trust Me, Coaching Girls Is a Whole New Ballgame,” included passages borrowed from a column written by Rick Reilly for Sports Illustrated. Sleeper has been placed on suspension pending an in-depth review of the matter.
The Herald has apologized to Reilly for the unauthorized use of his work. We also apologize to our readers and promise to do everything possible to prevent this kind of failure in the future.
The offending column is online here. As of now, it includes no mention of plagiarism.
This is the second time in less than two months that a sports journalist has been busted for plagiarising from an old Rick Reilly column. In early June, Dave Pratt, a Vancouver radio personality, lost his column in the Vancouver Province after he stole from a 2000 Reilly column in Sports Illustrated. When contacted for comment, he told the CBC, “It was a Saturday and I wanted to get out of [the office] before noon.”
