Could you stand idly by and watch your friend be the victim of theft? I can’t.
I have a friend and fellow golf blogger named John Duval and his site is called Into The Grain. I had the pleasure of meeting and even playing golf with John in Orlando earlier this year. John wrote a nice article with 10 pointers on playing winter golf back in January 2010. There are some great pieces of advice in there which will really help golfers deal with golfing in the winter.
Apparently Tallahasse.com’s Becky Sauers liked John’s piece so much, she decided copy and paste it into an article and call it her own. She made a couple of small changes to John’s work, like changing the words “ski parka” to “big heavy jacket” and such. That way she must have thought nobody would notice that she was stealing someone’s work. Of course she gave no credit to John and had no permission from John to use his material.
The biggest no-no in journalism is plagiarism or stealing material. Where I come from we string up people who do that and stone them. Then we take them to Detroit to be tortured.
See Becky’s article below left and John’s article below right and click the images to see larger versions:
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Becky Sauers’ next move needs to be removing that piece from Tallahassee.com’s web site, and then posting a public apology and admission that she stole someone’s content.
Man up Becky. Golf is an honorable game. We call penalties on ourselves. We’re waiting.
HOGWire – Golf Industry News
The worst thing about this is that she is a Class A LPGA professional! No response yet from the Sports editor of Tallahassee.com. Golf Pros who write on websites like this one or golf bloggers aren’t “real” journalists, but it doesn’t mean we can ignore basic journalistic standards.
This was a really superb blog!
As a retired sports editor, I have to say that this is such an obvious and blatant case of plagiarism that I would have fired this writer instantly. The really bad thing about it is, I’ll bet if she asked the blogger for permission to use his stuff, properly crediting him, I’ll bet he would have agreed, and using it that way wouldn’t have harmed her piece at all.
I posted this message to the sports editor at tallahassee.com: Are the editors there aware of the apparant plagiarism committed by Becky Sauers with respect to a winter golf artical that appears to have originally appeared on the website intothegrain.com in January of 2010? If this theft occurred was disciplinary action taken? Have the editors printed a formal apology to the original author giving him credit for the work? What would ethics dictate be done? I think all fans of HOG and intothegrain should do the same (just dont plagiarize me) lol J/K S. Rossa
I hope Ms Sauers does the honorable thing and will apologize to the original author. I wouldn’t be surprised if she hasn’t done this before. How does one look at themselves in the mirror after such thievery? Shameful!!
I have yet to hear directly from the editor of the Tallahassee Democrat and Tallahassee.com, but I have been told through a reliable source that reached out on my behalf to them that Ms. Sauers’ agreement has been terminated and the offending article has been removed. Stay tuned for further developments…
Karma has a way of working itself out.
While I agree that it is wrong to plagerize, I saw that the paper did make note of the work being plagerized and Becky Sauers is no longer working for them because of this incident. What she wrote on her own was well-written. It’s too bad.
Stringing up stoning is a harsh penalty…you’re taking this a bit too far my man.
Thanks for the comments Tallahassee Reader. I’d have to say that being taken to Detroit to be tortured is far worse than being strung up and stoned.