 Late last night The Courant – in a copyrighted statement - apologized for its blatant, and wholesale plagiarism of other newspapers.
  Some questions come to mind:
  This has been going on for weeks, it was even mentioned in Courant Columnist Rick Green’s Blog. Why did it take a front-page story Saturday morning in the JI to finally get the Courant to “review” what its been doing?
  Why can’t The Courant even print Levine’s actual title Director of content, Hartford Courant AND Fox 61?
  How much longer will Tribune and its creditors permit Levine and his mentor, Courant/Fox 61 Publisher Rich Graziano and Editor Naedine Hazell run the oldest newspaper of continuous circulation into the ground?
STATEMENT FROM JEFFREY S. LEVINE, SVP – DIRECTOR OF CONTENT, HARTFORD COURANT
Over the past month, The Hartford Courant has experimented with new strategies to aggregate news from sources around the state to better serve its readers online and in print. Aggregation is the process of synopsizing information from other news sources, most commonly by placing a portion of the information on your web site and linking to the original story, as is done by Google News. It is a practice being used increasingly by traditional news organizations around the country.
Last week, The Courant received a letter from The Journal Inquirer managing editor that prompted it to review our aggregation strategy. We found that there were legitimate points of concern. Most importantly, we discovered a mistake in our editing process when we take articles from our website to our print newspaper. We found that we inappropriately dropped the attribution or proper credit and in some cases credited ourselves with a byline to a Courant reporter. Once made aware of this mistake, The Courant took immediate steps to correct the process. It is, and has been, the policy of The Hartford Courant to attribute all information to its proper source.
The Courant regrets these errors and we are continuing to review our editing procedures to ensure that these mistakes will not occur in the future. An example occurred on page 4 of the Eastern Connecticut edition of today’s iTowns section, which is Section H and wraps around the CTLiving section. This section was placed into distribution before we became aware it contained a brief report about the Hebron superintendent, without proper attribution.
We will continue to review our overall aggregation strategy to make sure that it meets our standards and recognizes the work of other news organizations.
Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant
My first question when I read this in the Courant was, if he knew that some editions of today’s paper would have the Hebron story without proper attribution, why did he not provide the correction in this statement? To me, that says they still don’t intend to properly attribute stories unless they’re caught. (And, no, I’m not a journalist, just a Courant subscriber who’s about to cancel.)
These guys are all crooks. They’re poka playas! Poka playas!! I know these people, and none of them have last names….all trash, TRASH!
As a professional researcher-writer-editor, and as one who advises businesses on copyright issues (though I am not an attorney), I am outraged at The Courant’s editorial choices and insulted by their cavalier attitude and delayed management response. The Courant’s statement offers “regret,” but note that no actual apology has been issued, nor do I see any offer of compensation to the newspapers and writers whose material was taken without permission and without compensation.
I posted a comment to The Courant’s site earlier today, but it has not been published. I’ve expanded it and posted it to my blog:
http://peregrine-research.blogspot.com/2009/08/whose-news.html
I make several important points, each of which is discussed in more detail at my blog.
* The Courant claims that its “aggregation” practice is OK. They are not aggregating, they are compiling. More detail at my blog posting.
* The Courant compares its practice to GoogleNews. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that Google News is the subject of an ongoing antitrust investigation, and has been charged with infringing the copyrights of the producers of the news stories it compiles?
* Many commentators and bloggers are saying that copyright abridges freedom of the press. WRONG. Others say that “fair use” allows unfettered re-use. WRONG. Explanations at my blog.
Hmmm…If The New Britain Herald used The Courant’s stories without attribution, you can bet that The Courant’s lawyers would be out in force.
George, good to see you online with your own space. Thanks for your valuable work.
i do, and i make typos, but you did not respond to my comment about your incorrect statements
It seems to me that as a former Hartford Courant employee, it is
deja vu all over again. Several years ago when Times Mirror bought the Courant, they sent the hot shots in from the LA Times to run the Courant newsroom. There was an emergency in Hartford and the brilliant LA Times reporters had to ask the telephone operators how to get the location. The had no clue!.
That is what is happening with the aggregation policy. These people from TV have not a clue on how to run a newspaper. They need to stick to running TV stations and get the people back who know how to run a newspaper.
Sara, you hit the point in you blog, I’m also tried looking information and I ened up in Chicago and still the information not there.
go on the internet and try clicking on a column and a blog that i wrote while at the courant and see what happens
Hey George, It is funny how they didn’t even update your Bio, you are still listed you work for them.
Levine’s statement in and of itself is misleading and dishonest. This was not an honest mistake. Plagiarizing the work of others is intentional and willful. Taking credit for product that you didn’t produce is just as bad. Come on. Honestly, what the hell is wrong with you people? Did you never graduate from J school or do you all just have your head up your collective asxes? When I was a reporter, plagiarism was right up there with fact errors in stories.