In a move that could send shockwaves through the already struggling newspaper industry, the Journal Inquirer filed suit Wednesday against the Hartford Courant for plagiarism – which “the country’s oldest newspaper in continuous publication” so much as admitted in print.
The lawsuit calls it “a pattern of improper competition” by the Courant and highlights 11 examples of stories that were written by the JI that appeared days later in the Courant under the byline Aviv Blasbalg, however documents available only show story headlines.
The practice began over the summer, says an article in the suburban newspaper, which competes with the Courant in the region. The JI said it started in July when the Courant created an aggregation editor. Readers started seeing stories from other local papers appearing in the Courant “some clearly attributed to the originating papers but some not,” writes the JI.
The paper’s managing editor detailed the incidents to the publisher of the Courant in mid-August, and a few weeks later, reported a story that showed the Courant had done this to other regional papers, including the Bristol Press, New Britain Herald, Torrington Register-Citizen and Waterbury Republican-American.
Courant Columnist Rick Green covered the story online and posted the response from Senior V.P. Jeff Levine. In part it read:
“We found that we inappropriately dropped the attribution or proper credit and in some cases credited ourselves with a byline to a Courant reporter…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.”
The Journal Inquirer is seeking damages, attorney’s fees and punitive damages.
Our calls to the Hartford Courant have not been returned.
