We’re a little late on this…
Over the weekend the Courant ran an apology to its readers when sportswriter John Altavilla copied an ESPN report stating that UConn Women’s Basketball recruit Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis committed to play for the Huskies. John also wrote an apology to his readers on his Courant Blog.
A summary of the issue was posted on the comment portion of the blog from the person who originally recognized the problem.
Interesting thoughts on the state of the Hartford Courant:
It was me; I caused the “problem”. I’m not a twit, I’m a UConn grad and a former team sport (not basketball) co-captain. Mr. Altavilla edited the ESPN/Hoopgurlz piece (removed paragraph 3 of 5 and left the remainder verbatim). Were you aware that other Courant writers got in trouble recently for non-attribution of their sources? So I sent Mr. Altavilla a blog gently chiding him about lazy journalism. His piece and my blog were yanked almost immediately. I’m sure that not referencing the source was merely an oversight on his part. I mean, nobody would deliberately plagiarize a simple little news snippet. You’re right, it’s not a big deal. But there is a larger point here. The Hartford Courant is an upper-echelon newspaper. Mike Anthony and John Altavilla are the standard-bearers of the Bill Lee and Owen Canfield legacy. And when I see derivative writing about “hot wings on the road” from Mr. Anthony and cut-and-paste blog items from Mr. Altavilla and non-spellchecked pieces from each, I’m concerned. Being a staff writer at the hornets nest that the Hartford Courant has become can’t be an easy job. All I’m saying is that these guys need to have their game face on every single time that they touch their keyboards. (And John, ask Dan Fleser how Setember 23 can be a Tuesday AND a Wednsday. See the photo caption of his Simmons/UT self-report article). So you see, Dave, it wasn’t a hateful, picky Tennessee blogger. It was a UConn guy who admires good sportswriting and who respects John Altavilla.
Peace to both of you.
We will never know whether or not Mr. Altavilla purposely did not credit the report to ESPN. Intentional or not, the fact that this happened shortly after the Courant plagiarism scandal makes the paper look bad….again.
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