Warm fuzzy columnist Dianna Griego Erwin has resigned from the Bee under a cloud of suspicion. It appears that she has been fabricating sources for her column. She claims she isn't guilty and that her name will be cleared but has resigned anyway.
This isn't the first time the Bee has had problems like this. Does anyone remember the TV columnist (I can't remember his name) who quit or was fired amid charges or plagiarism, and then was later rehired and did it again? That was crazy. He seemed to be having crazy personal problems and claimed that the stress drove him to plagiarize Steven King, among others.
I'm busy (we're submitting our abstract for the neuroscience meeting today, yay!) but I'll try to blog later.
Are you thinking of Joe Baltake? I seem to remember, a few years ago, that it was discovered that he had plagerized a colleague's work from another paper, and when confronted about the matter he freaked the fuck out and had to be institutionalized for awhile. Now there's someone who needs to resign from the Bee.
ReplyDeleteNope it wasn't Baltake. It was definitely the TV guy. I'll try to find out.
ReplyDeleteIt was the guy who used to refer to himself as "Uncle Bob." I can't remember his last name, but he was funny as hell.
ReplyDeleteSacramento Bee editor Gregory Favre fired TV columnist Bob Wisehart the second time he plagiarized. For the first offense, Wisehart got a five-month suspension even though his plagiarism involved hundreds of words taken from Stephen King's book Danse Macabre for a television column about horror shows. "I don't believe one offense is worth destroying peoples' lives and careers," Favre said. "The second time the institution of the newspaper was damaged. The integrity of the newspaper was more important than any individual." He added that Wisehart "is an extraordinarily talented young man" whose "original work was better than what he copied."
ReplyDeleteOuch! dis to Steven King!
Ha Ha. I just plagiarized that last comment.
ReplyDeleteI wish I had read this post earlier, I would have sounded HELLLLLLLA smart! For the record, Baltake left for good earlier this year or late last...Carla Meyer does most of the film reviews...that is, when the Bee doesn't just reprint Ebert's review, which is pretty much every fucking time.
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