State government reporter Jack Brammer has returned to his job after a random check of his stories over the past two years revealed no additional examples of using under his by-line material originally published in another newspaper. The inquiry was conducted after Brammer last week used, almost verbatim, two paragraphs of background material that appeared the previous day in a story in The Courier-Journal of Louisville.
Brammer has apologized to the Courier-Journal reporter and explained that he inadvertently lifted the paragraphs by “cutting and pasting” an electronic version of the C-J story into his working file of notes. The Herald-Leader regrets the error.
Marilyn Thompson
Editor
Thank you. Jack is good people and a good reporter.
Jack Brammer is a man of integrity.
The same thing happened The Hartford Courant where they admitted using verbatim “copy” from the Bristol Press and the New Britain Herald. It is common practice to rewrite news items from competing publications. It is best to given attribution to the publication where the article first appeared.