By: E&P Staff The irony was amusing, if appalling, and the newspaper's explanation was decidedly weak. But, without further ado or comment, we will let Joseph Kahn in the Boston Globe today tell the story. No one at the Herald has yet contacted E&P to apologize.
"Did yesterday's Inside Track column in the Boston Herald fail to credit another journalistic source properly on an item concerning -- of all subjects -- plagiarism? Apparently it did, although the Herald claims it wasn't trying to mislead readers," Kahn writes.
"The background: On June 6, Editor & Publisher's website posted an article about Seth Mnookin's current Vanity Fair piece in which Mnookin examines whether Dan Brown may have modeled 'The Da Vinci Code' on another novel. In yesterday's Herald, and for a while on its website, the Track ran a story virtually identical to E&P's -- with minimal rewriting and no attribution.
"By yesterday afternoon, The Huffington Post website had weighed in with a story headlined 'Boston Herald Rips Off E&P In Meta-Media Plagiarism Story,' after which the Herald dropped its online version of the Track item. The Huffington Post also quoted Track co-editor Gayle Fee as admitting she'd rewritten the E&P story on deadline and should have credited her source.
"Reached yesterday by the Globe, E&P editor Greg Mitchell said that while the 'Da Vinci Code' flap doesn't much interest him, the irony of a plagiarism story being ripped off, whether calculatedly or carelessly, 'almost speaks for itself.' Said Mitchell, 'They've admitted they did something wrong. What more can I add?'
"Meanwhile, Fee reiterated that she rewrote the E&P story 'in five minutes, on my way out the door' and never thought readers would mistake it for staff-written material. 'We're not trying to pass it off as original work,' said Fee."
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