More than 30 years after he joined The Kansas City Star, 11 of which were spent as a columnist, Steve Penn has been fired from the city's major daily for stealing his work from other sources.
"In the normal editing process and follow-up review, it was discovered that Penn had lifted material from press releases verbatim, in some cases presenting others' conclusions and opinions as his own and without attribution," said the Star article announcing the firing. The Star gave multiple examples of Penn's theft, including an incident in which Penn's entire column was a near verbatim rewrite of a news release about Duke Ellington's family working with Alaadeen Enterprises Inc. to aid U.S. veterans.
More surprising than the Star's reaction to Penn's theft is that of some local media watchers. Over at John Landsberg's media blog Bottom Line Communications, one unidentified source says of the firing: "Competition from social media reporting is creating so much angst within the traditional media, that who knows what's ethical or not." As if the existence of Wordpress, Twitter and Facebook had changed the definition of plagiarism.
Penn's sin isn't using news releases to find something to write about. There are good causes and genuinely newsworthy events that need help getting word out. If a reporter hears about them because the people behind the scenes sent an e-mail pimping themselves rather than wait for word of mouth to do the job, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But reporters follow up on those releases with the basic journalistic work of making a few phone calls. In some cases, a reporter can make a story his own without even stepping out of the office.
Penn's worst crime was that in a business where his unknown compatriots are working under the shadow of a gun, for a smaller check, and without the luxury of 12 inches of column space to stump for whatever cause they want, he was too goddamn lazy.
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how the heck did he last 30 years....oh wait he's the illegitimate child of Louis DoNoGood and Mary "Dirty" Sanchez.... no need to ask!
As an editor for a publication in another country, I applaud The KC Star for taking this decision -- and wish that I were in the position to do the same to many of the writers I supervise. If not to fire, then at least to transform mindsets and use correct attribution. Any citing of social media as an excuse for poor journalism would be like citing an engineer's fondness for playing with Legos as the cause of a bridge's collapse.
It's not an issue of race (hello, locomotivebreath1901 ), but an issue of ethical training and education. And it's up to us as editors (and parents!?) to inform and train writers of what journalism -- and plagarism -- really is. Thank you.
Sounds like Penn wasn't the only one not doing his job, if this has been going on for years and no one at the Star detected it. And sounds like the new editor is cleaning house.
You are an idiot. Please report to your nearest trash bag, tie it around your head, and BREATHE DEEP.
His colleagues are under constant fear of layoffs having already survived - what? - two rounds of cuts a year since 2007? As a metro columnist allowed to speak out on issues that matter to him, he has one of the most high profile and some would argue better jobs in print journalism available to him in the metro today. The Star must not have even demanded that much of him considering how long he was allowed to not even think of his own ideas or "emotions." So all he had to do to keep skating by with one a rare, prestigious, print gig at a time of total economic collapse was spend 20 minutes rewording things, he didn't even have to come up with takes or generate ideas on his own. He couldn't even do that. Yes, that caption, really.
I agree that there are some bloggers out there who do great work -- and where Penn was concerned, bettering him is a matter of clearing a very low bar. The only thing I take issue on is the idea that somehow social media changes the standards of what good journalism should be, regardless of the person writing it, or somehow clouds the morality of whether it's right to outright steal copy without attribution.
The traditional media continually decry the dearth of "good" journalism with the advent of social media. While there's plenty of shit out there, the system of checks and balances on the untamed Web sometimes works better than in these content silos. There are plenty of bloggers out there doing way more investigation, analysis and reporting than Penn in this instance. People need to stop fostering this opposition and start identifying good journalism wherever it exists.
"Steve Penn has been fired from the city's major daily for stealing his work from other sources."
That's mighty mean-spirited and intolerant.
So, why does the KC (red) Star hate Black people?
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