AP Firing of Sportswriter Raises Questions About Rewrites

By: Mark Fitzgerald When does rewriting news for a wire service become a firing offense?

That's the issue in a union grievance hearing scheduled for next week between The Associated Press and the News Media Guild. It's a case that has stirred up strong feelings among members and on Internet bulletin board discussion of the Newspaper Guild local, previously known as the Wire Service Guild.

Some members say the AP's firing of a veteran sportswriter, apparently for using material from a Major League Baseball Web site, is chilling in a job that necessarily involves rewriting news first published elsewhere.

John Mossman, a veteran sportswriter in AP's Denver office, was fired in May under circumstances that are not clear. News Media Guild President Tony Winton said the termination letter sent to Mossman does not accuse the writer of plagiarism.

"Plagiarism is a really loaded word, and the company does not make an allegation of plagiarism in the termination letter," Winton said. "What's at the heart of this is the company's interpretation of work rules about picking up material, news material. To be honest with you, (the rules) are convoluted, and that's what we're investigating in this grievance."

AP spokesman Jack Stokes declined to comment on the case, saying the wire does not comment on labor issues. He said AP would also not comment on its internal guidelines about plagiarism.

Mossman, reached by phone at his Lakewood, Colo., home earlier this week, said he was reluctant to comment because he believed the grievance hearing was imminent. He did not immediately return a follow-up phone message left Friday.

Local President Winton said Friday that AP had not yet provided the union "some of the basic facts we need," such as copies of material filed by Mossman, and the source of the material. Friday and in an earlier interview, Mossman said the union had "some very serious questions about the termination, and the facts the company is relying on to terminate him."

"The AP is a cooperative by definition," he added. "It involves the sharing of news and photos and other material ... from members. That's what the AP is."

A posting on the union's board offered the following account of the incident leading to Mossman's firing. Mossman went into the office to file some work on his day off, a regular practice. A colleague asked for help finding information about a trade involving the Colorado Rockies baseball team. Mossman "took nearly verbatim three grafs from the mlb.com site," the posting stated, referring to the official Web site of Major League Baseball. The site includes both news and press releases about the league and its teams. The posting said Mossman wrote an approximately 280-word account with no byline. Information from mlb.com, the posting said, "is freely given and they want us to use it (but) the company calls this plagiarism."

An AP staffer, who insisted on anonymity, e-mailed E&P that "management is cracking down almost at random" on the kinds of "plagiarism" that have been, in his view, long accepted.