Thief stopped
This guy's 27 years old and he's writing for The New York Times -- or, at least he was, until he pulled this crap. Said he got his notes and his news clips mixed up, which is why he copied a big chunk of a story from a Texas newspaper instead of writing it himself. That's called plagiarism. Plagiarism is to the news business what gambling is to the sports world. It's the one unforgivable sin.

Journalism Tip No. 1: Your notes are in your handwriting. Your news clips are the items that were set in type. For most sighted folks, it's not easy to confuse the two.

I'm still shaking my head while trying to get my mind around the phrase he's 27 and he's writing for The New York Times. This fellow had somehow developed a reputation for being a newsroom golden boy despite having generated 50 corrections in four years. That's 12.5 "the Times regrets the error"s every year. In my shop, you're going to hear about it once you're past three or four in a 12-month period.

I'm stunned to hear something like that was going on at the Times. His editors should have scared him to the point that he was quadruple-checking everything about 40 corrections ago. They didn't. So he was probably justified in thinking that he could get away with damn near copying-and-pasting from another story. Hell, I haven't been fired yet ...

And had he still been writing for the Boston Globe, he might not have been fired.

The theft occurred in a story out of San Antonio, Texas. It was brought to the Times' attention by the editor of the newspaper in San Antone.

Which leads me to Journalism Tip No. 2: Dude, every editor in the country reads the f-ing New York Times. Most of them are relying on it to make their own news judgments. You're sure as hell not going to be able to steal from a paper and put your ill-gotten booty under your byline in The New York Times and not expect the editor of the paper in that town to see it.

He's 27 and he's pissed away the career opportunity of a lifetime, one that the rest of us would sell out our own mothers for. What a f---ing idiot.