Jackson Free Press

The Clarion-Ledger took another black eye last week when an alert reader from Georgia exposed the apparent plagiarism of Ledger food writer Courtney Taylor. A food feature that ran in The Clarion-Ledger on July 26 under Taylor's byline was profoundly similar to an article by Donna Florio on the Southern Living Web site.

The two features are virtually identical, with only a word or two changed in many sentences. The Clarion-Ledger announced it was firing Taylor on Aug. 2. (There is already a thread on this subject.)

Taylor's plagiarism might never have been detected were it not for Betty Vereen Hill of Swainsboro, Ga. Hill, 58, is an assistant to the chief of the Swainsboro Police Department and a proud grandmother of four boys.

On July 26, Hill was checking recipes online, as she does every Wednesday. She visited the Southern Living Web site and noted an article by Donna Florio about fried green tomatoes. The very next site she checked for recipes was The Clarion-Ledger, where she noted another article on the same subject. When she read the article, she was stunned.

"I printed them both out, sat down at the kitchen table," Hill said, "and compared them line by line. There was no question in my mind that one of those people plagiarized the other."

Hill deduced that Taylor was the likeliest culprit as her article appeared after Florio's, so she e-mailed Clarion-Ledger Managing Editor Don Hudson that evening. He replied and thanked Hill for her e-mail. "I'm going to look into this immediately," he pledged.

The next morning, on July 27, the article by Taylor was still on The Clarion-Ledger Web site, where it remained until late afternoon. Hill called Southern Living and left a message with Florio. By the time Florio called her back at around 4:30 p.m., the article had been removed and replaced with a different article that was also by Taylor. The Clarion-Ledger offered no explanation for the change, but Hill was able to fax the original story to Florio on July 28.

"(Florio) called me about half an hour after I faxed it," Hill said, "and told me the article was ‘breathtaking.'"

For the next two days, Taylor's second article remained on Goliath's Web site, with no explanation or apology. "I was concerned that there might be a cover-up afoot. That's when I decided to go into The Clarion-Ledger forums," Hill said.

Hill was shocked by the response she received after posting about the plagiarism on July 31. Although some posters took the problem seriously, a group of "trolls" began to attack her. They dismissed plagiarism as a serious concern and accused Hill of being a spy for the JFP. They even accused her of being JFP Editor-in-Chief Donna Ladd in disguise.

"I didn't know who this Ladd was," Hill said. "I was completely baffled. I could not imagine what they were talking about."

Hill began to investigate and found the JFP's Web site. "As a matter of fact, I was astonished to see that the JFP had already started its own thread on The Clarion-Ledger's plagiarism." Ladd had reported Hill's forum entry on the JFP site.

Hill registered with the JFP Web site and introduced herself. "Several cordial, complimentary things came in. Ms. Ladd was extremely kind, welcoming me there, and there were no trolls at all."

It was not until Wednesday, Aug. 2, a full week after Hill brought the issue to their attention, that The Clarion-Ledger finally pulled Taylor's second article and posted a short note: "Several passages that appeared in Courtney Taylor's column on fried green tomatoes on July 26 should have been attributed to an article in Southern Living magazine. The writer did not attribute the information. Taylor's work no longer will appear in The Clarion-Ledger."

"In my view, the attribution message is far from sufficient," Hill said, "because anyone with half a brain who reads these two articles and compares them can see that one of these two authors plagiarized the other. … The whole suggestion that this is an attribution error is just laughable."

The Clarion-Ledger has not posted any further explanations, let alone an apology to Florio or readers over the following week.

Scott Jones, executive food editor for Southern Living, told the JFP: "This is an unfortunate event. ... We feel strongly about maintaining journalistic integrity, and in our line of work we have always been and always will be concerned about copyright issues." Jones says that to his knowledge, The Clarion-Ledger has not contacted Southern Living.

Hudson has not communicated with Hill since his first e-mail, and he did not respond to a JFP request for comment on Tuesday.

The story has now received local attention from WLBT and national attention from the Associated Press and MediaBlog Net, a site where journalists track media matters. In the meantime, fellow Gannett paper The Hattiesburg American posted a Taylor article to its site the same day she was dismissed from The Clarion-Ledger, though it removed that article several days later. Hattiesburg American Managing Editor Dan Davis did not return a call for comment.

"They seem to think that if they don't mention it, it doesn't exist," Hill said. "It astounds me that any newspaper the size of The Clarion-Ledger would be peopled by employees who seem to have so little care for integrity in journalism. … There is obviously a whole culture there of just hiding information. I can't understand journalists who would want to operate in that manner, because there are so many journalists who just radiate integrity."