Maine Reporter Suspended for Failing to Credit Source

By: A Bangor Daily News reporter has been suspended for five days for including material from another newspaper in a story she wrote without crediting the source.

Sharon Mack included passages from a story published April 4 in the Christian Science Monitor in her bylined story three days later about the use of bees in Maine farming, said Michael Dowd, managing editor of the Bangor Daily News.

Mack, who has worked for the newspaper for 18 years, apologized in writing to Moises Velasquez-Manoff, the Christian Science Monitor reporter who wrote the story.

"In a moment of what I can only say was stupidity and sloppiness, I failed to delete the research from the file before it was sent on to the editors. In addition, some of your work was included in my story without credit to either you or the Christian Science Monitor.

"This was not my intent and I am mortified that such an egregious error occurred," Mack wrote.

Similarities in the stories were called to the attention of editors of the Bangor newspaper by a reader in Massachusetts. The passages in question in Mack's story were included in six paragraphs in a 27-paragraph story.

A subsequent investigation by editors that included an interview of Mack and review of her past work determined the apparent case of plagiarism to be isolated, the Bangor Daily News said.