Well well well!
Looks like Charles Richardson had to soldier up and make a public statement today. I’d say it is a minor win, even though he still won’t come out and name Frank Gadbois as the plagiarist; nor did he address the FACT that there is a small group of regulars who get priority over everyone else. And of course he still won’t admit to printing more than one letter per week from his “favorites” nearly every week as has been documented here.
Is Frank Gadbois really banned for six months as we’ve been led to believe? We shall see. I’d love to find out what sort of fallout there was at the Telegraph over Frank’s latest plagiarization of a New York Times article.
Now as for Charles Richardson’s statement, well I’m going to help Mr. Richardson out a little bit and re-write it for him.
The Viewpoints page is an open forum for the community to discuss the issues of the day. The Telegraph is proud to print more letters per week from my favorite letter writers than any other newspaper in Macon. We try, as best we can, to figure out a way to print a letter rather than discard it. At times, our letter writers rightfully disagree with our editing choices. While some will find it hard to believe, most edits are made based on who wrote the letter rather than space considerations. We receive hundreds of submissions every week. It would be easier to print another letter from one of our favorites than to purposely sift through and find someone who hasn’t been published in a long time, which is what some writers have proven.
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Here are a few tips that will aid us in publishing your letter. We try to publish letters in the order we receive them, but letters written by our favorites receive preference. While we have a word limit, we reserve the right to adjust that limit depending on the author and space available. Shorter letters, however, are likely to be published before longer letters, as are letters received via e-mail, and anything written by Daniel Schlafer.
Two of our most vexing problems in this age of technology are plagiarism and form letters. It is possible to pull information from the Internet from thousands of sources. Now that we’ve been busted twice for printing plagiarized letters from Frank Gadbois, we ask our letter writers to follow one simple rule: If you copy information from any source, credit the source. Failure to give credit where credit is due will result in being banned from this page for a period no less than six months It is unfair and ethically wrong to pass off other people’s ideas and words as one’s own. It is possible to check each letter in only a matter of minutes on Google; fortunately, readers often spot and report violators and we try to cover up as much as possible. Such was the case recently when Frank Gadbois plagiarized ‘Sarah and Her Tribe’ by Jonathan Raban and then a month later plagiarized ‘Tea Party Avoids Divisive Social Issues’ by Kate Zernike of the New York Times.
Form letters are another issue. They are available all over the Internet pushing various causes. During the height of the health-care debate, we received hundreds of form letters for and against health-care reform. Most were caught. They are pretty easy to spot — but I just don’t bother checking when I agree with the writer. If you read a letter you believe to be a form letter, please let us know and we’ll ignore you.
A few minor issues. Please do not send the same letter repeatedly. I’m easily confused and can’t discern which version of the letter you wanted to be published so I’ll just go ahead and reprint your letter. If you would like to personally see how the editing process works for letters to the editor, give me a call and I’ll set a date.
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