At the outset we'll say that we don't think this is plagiarism per se. But. Still. The Times-Tribune's Christopher J. Kelly wrote today about how the vintage Sesame Street episodes coming out on DVD carry a parental-warning label. Kelly, like many people, read this in the Sunday New York Times magazine a week ago. Kelly pretty much credits The Times and reporter Virginia Heffernan when he lifts a few lines from one of Heffernan's interviews.
But he goes on to write generally about the news -- and hits most of the same points Heffernan does in her writing.
Heffernan: "Cookie Monster was on a fast track to diabetes."
Kelly: "Cookie Monster is not exactly a model of healthy eating and self-control. [...] And his diabetes risk? Let’s not even go there."
Heffernan: "Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but... well, he could have wanted anything. As it was, he fed her milk and cookies."
Kelly: "The “Sesame Street” of yore was a place where a nice neighborhood man might ask a young girl to come to his house for milk and cookies. Imagine such a scene being judged anything but sinister these days."
Heffernan: "The masonry on the dingy brownstone at 123 Sesame Street, where the closeted Ernie and Bert shared a dismal basement apartment, was deteriorating."
Kelly: "What about Ernie and Bert? Two guys living in a basement apartment for 40 years with no signs of girlfriends is the kind of thing that raises eyebrows...."
Like we said. This doesn't constitute plagiarism per se. But it's lazy as hell.
62 comments:
Call it intellectual plagiarism or a bankruptcy of ideas and creativity.
This is typical Kelly, just a little more obvious than his average column. He might be the worst local columnist I've ever read, and he's getting worse.
Yeah, it's lazy. I don't mind him taking the idea. Reporters and even columnists do that all the time. But how hard would it have been to get the DVDs and actually watch them for some fresh insight, rather than to essentially do a column on someone else's column?
The guy works on the metro desk and has basically been running the desk for a year and a half. The powers that be freak when he's outside the building for more than 15 minutes. So he's not allowed to work the streets, follow up leads and so on like a normal columnist. Haters, try reporting and writing a regular local column under those circumstances.
The guy works on the metro desk and has basically been running the desk for a year and a half. The powers that be freak when he's outside the building for more than 15 minutes. So he's not allowed to work the streets, follow up leads and so on like a normal columnist. Haters, try reporting and writing a regular local column under those circumstances.
You make it sound like he's in a concentration camp or doing this at gunpoint. "Those circumstances" are circumstances Kelly embraced openly. No one made him move onto the desk. No one made him hold onto his column.
Seriously. Come up with some original ideas. Make a few phone calls. Or, barring that, at least watch the damned DvD for yourself before writing an opinion piece based solely on someone else's opinions.
A column is not merely a cocktail party conversation, or at least it shouldn't be.
I used to think Kelly was OK as a columnist, just a little undisciplined. He totally jumped the shark when he went to the metro desk and insisted on keeping the column. The column's gotten so much lamer and the only things he seems to leave the office for are asinine, like the Christmas shopping hugs. I just get the feeling that nobody's ever said "no" to this guy or put a boot up his ass to do the job right.
FYI Slavin,
He didn't insist on keeping the column when he moved over to the desk. Management wanted him to do both.
Not true, according to people involved:
****He didn't insist on keeping the column when he moved over to the desk. Management wanted him to do both.****
and you are involved, how again?
Management didn't ask him to do both.
Kelly approached management and asked for the metro job. He was told that if he wanted it, he had to do both.
That was Kelly's choice. He could have backed off at that point, or gotten some balls and said he couldn't do both jobs well, but he didn't.
This is according to at least two people involved in the conversations, one of whom is no longer on Penn Ave.
More recently, Kelly has been telling people that management (Larry and Murph) have "agreed" to let him keep the column as metro editor.
Try again, hotshot. You're just plain wrong.
Here's the deal; some people don't like the column, others do.
Media people are way more cynical and less inclined to cut him any kind of break.
Read that column like the typical NEPA reader who DOESN'T read the NYT's and it was a nice read. Read the NYT's version first and I get what you're saying.
Kelly's a good guy who works his butt off for his company. He would never ask anyone to do something he wouldn't be willing to do. The guy spent years on the streets, it's doubtful he forgot everything he learned in a year.
Lighten up kids, Chris is A-OK. Guess what, he could teach a few of the kids a thing or two if they're not careful. I'd put him on my team if I were picking teams.
QUOTE: "Read that column like the typical NEPA reader who DOESN'T read the NYT's and it was a nice read. Read the NYT's version first and I get what you're saying."
I'm loving that logic. Hey, let's lift columns out of the New York Times every day because, you know, how many dumb-fuck NEPA readers will ever know?
"I'm loving that logic. Hey, let's lift columns out of the New York Times every day because, you know, how many dumb-fuck NEPA readers will ever know?"
Yeah. And, after all, Kelly's a nice guy. :p
Heckuva job there, Kelly.
Yeah, Kelly COULD teach the kids a few things if he weren't so fucking lazy, spending all that quality time surfing the net looking for other people's ideas (I'm being charitable here). Believe me, the kind of lessons he's teaching the kids now you better hope you don't read about on Romenesko.
:)
"Read that column like the typical NEPA reader who DOESN'T read the NYT's and it was a nice read."
How utterly precious. So what you're saying is that Kelly's piece sounds totally original, provided of course you don't read the piece he plagiarized it from.
He didn't only steal the idea from the NYT, he stole their examples. He probably never even looked at the DVD himself. So what he ended up doing was rewriting the NYT piece and presenting it as his own.
People have been fired for doing a LOT less.
Not to mention the fact that some of the people perp-walked by Beaupre, Murphy and Ed worked a hell of a lot harder than Kelly.
Kelly had the choice to get rid of one of his columns when he became assistant metro editor. He, and only he, decided to keep both. That's unfair to everyone involved. It's unfair to reporters when he locks himself up two-three days a week in Murph's office or at his home to write his columns. It's unfair to readers who get half-assed columns from him and it's unfair to other editors who have to pick up his work because he's busy with his columns. But, it was HIS choice. He's a part-time editor and a part-time columnist now and as a result does neither job well. Contrary to popular belief, he IS allowed to leave the building and DOES regularly, practically every 20 minutes - for cigarettes, coffee, food. Stealing someone else's original work is plagarism in any form. This is more proof he's drowning at his part-time jobs. It's sad. He should be pitied not mocked.
Is there a reason for Kelly to NOT be lazy? Like, oh say, competition?
Wrong, he should be pitied AND mocked and ridiculed and decried and exposed and disciplined...but pitied would be lowest on that list, because this is a result of the choices that he's made.
QUOTE: Is there a reason for Kelly to NOT be lazy? Like, oh say, competition?
Professionalism and pride?
What's happened to Kelly would be sad if not for the fact that it's his own doing. He's got some talent and some brains -- most hacks do -- but he's become the caricature of the lazy, sloppy, apathetic journalist. It's a friggin shame, really. He should have been better and readers deserve better.
Kelly has made it clear he does not care what you think. You are losers, haters and tinfoil-hat wearers. He's got Beaupre and Murf giving him the old "heckofajob Kelly" and they're the only people who get to vote on this. He could plagiarize Dave Barry word for word (if he hasn't already) and I doubt there'd be any repercussions. It's Times Shamrock, and the normal rules don't apply.
Hey guys, I'm striking out this week on the column. Got any story ideas?
You know, if he is getting away with all you say he's getting away with, why do you care? I'm not going to armchair psychology this one but if I did it wouldn't be all that pretty...and high-falutin' and noble standards and standing up for the reader wouldn't even come into it. Don't read him, problem solved. Or is it?
Because this a media blog site, so we talk about the media, and if someone puts their work out for all the world to see, then it's OK to talk about it. Same as it's OK to talk about movies or TV or books or sports and others who work in the public eye. Pretty simple, no need to analyze.
Analyze, okay. But you don't detect an undercurrent of anything at all here?
The way I look at it is, it's a matter of what the market will bear. If something is good it'll get noticed. If something's not so good, if it's not actively pissing someone off, few will notice. In the end if the people who are paying for it are happy with what they're paying for, what anyone else thinks doesn't really matter at all.
Chris Kelly didn't want this gig. He was given an offer he couldn't refuse. "Take the job or take a empty office paper box."
"The way I look at it is, it's a matter of what the market will bear. If something is good it'll get noticed. If something's not so good, if it's not actively pissing someone off, few will notice."
So, as long as the readers don't complain about plagiarism, why should we worry about it? I like that defense.
I wonder why it didn't work for Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, Monica Crowley, etc.? Oh yeah, those publications have a shread of ethical decency left to them.
This is just wrong. Chris Kelly is the victim here. Look at the picture of him and the picture of the Cookie Monster. It's obvious Sesame Street plagarized Chris Kelly by making the Cookie Monster out of his image. C is for column that's good enough for me...
cookies? who told you you could eat MY cookies???
PUT THAT COOKIE DOWN NOW!!!!!
8:58 pm Hilarious
Back to business though. How can anyone think this is OK? What sort of people reason this is OK because 1) maybe nobody read the real article and 2) chris kelly is a nice guy and 3) it's hard to write a column.
Absurd! This columnist would be at the very least reprimanded in any other market.And we wonder why people think of Scranton as the armpit of America. Pathetic.
Yeah, I don't want to see the guy fired. Too much of that going around. But he should be spoken to. And the powers that be should give him a new column idea: 1) show what you did like this blog post does; 2) apologize for your laziness; and 3) promise it won't happen again.
It CAN be done graciously. That would show real class for both Kelly and the Times.
12:29, congratulations. You have just proposed the least likely scenario in Scranton journalism history. Ed Christine and John Murphy will wed in a civil union before that happens.
Someone should go to Community Bake Shop tomorrow, order a bunch of cookies iced up like the Cookie Monster, and have them sent to Kelly in the newsroom.
I think Kelly wrote that last post as a way to get free cookies.
****Ed Christine and John Murphy will wed in a civil union before that happens.****
Just got my invitation! June 5. I wonder if the Times Tribune will publish that announcement.
Kelly forgot the one mainstay of Scranton journalism techniques in his copycat column -- localize, localize, localize. Wouldn't it have been a piss if he interviewed A. William Kelly, president of the local PBS station WVIA, for the article? The pompous blowhard Kelly versus the pompous blowhard Kelly would prove hysterical and Kelly could actually get Kelly on the record as to what he does to earn close to 200 Gs a year (that would be Bill Kelly, not Chris). I've seen better TV personalities on YouTube.
9:18 No kidding.
As for C Kelly, something really should be done. Anyway to send a link to the bosses to this web site? Hopefully a reader or two will call him out to the mat on it with a letter to the editor, but I'm not counting on it.
Sent Virginia the blog link. Let's see what she has to say.
Kelly should be writing for Sesame Street.
Funny how it also involves Cookie Monster, but here's an example of Kelly when he gets out of the newsroom. Not exactly Jimmy Breslin, but better than the toilet paper he's been filing.
http://www.thetimes-tribune.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=5010944&BRD=2185&PAG=461&dept_id=422126&rfi=6
A suspicious van creates suspense, piles up tickets in Scranton
Christopher J. Kelly
08/10/2002
Even from a block away, you couldn't help but spot it. It looked like the Cookie Monster trying to swallow Big Bird.
Reporting bad news is part of my job, but "Sesame Street Rocked by Cannibalism" isn't the kind of story I generally look for on my first day back from vacation. Imagine my relief when I realized it was merely a blue Plymouth Voyager minivan loaded with parking tickets.
There were eight of them stuffed under the wiper blades. The parking authority had been slapping the little yellow liens on the beached vehicle since the previous Wednesday, when someone parked it in front of The Scranton Times building on Penn Avenue and walked away.
After six business days, the owner hadn't come back for it, and it was easy to see why. Aside from the rack of $20 tickets, paint was peeling off the hood in long strips, the tires were beat and it was due for inspection in November.
It might have been inconspicuous in a scrap yard or outside a Billy Ray Cyrus concert, but it stuck out like a sore thumb on a city street.
"I can't believe this thing is still here," I said to a passer-by.
"Somebody should do something," she said, strongly hinting that somebody was me.
I didn't really need the prompting. As a serious journalist and vigilant, civic-minded American, I knew immediately what I had to do: Smoke a cigarette, go to my desk and surf the Internet.
About 63 Web pages later, the human resources manager appeared at my cubicle. He said he called the police about the minivan on Monday, and talked to a parking authority officer on Tuesday. The police had been by to look at it at least twice, but it was still taking up one of the precious few parking spaces on the block. He wanted to know why and thought I might like to find out.
So I went down for another, closer look. A quick peek through the windows was all it took to see that this was not merely a blue Plymouth Voyager minivan loaded with parking tickets, but a blue Plymouth Voyager minivan loaded with, among other things:
A big, aluminum briefcase
A cell phone
A tank of propane
A box of car fuses
Safety glasses
What appeared to be Petri dishes
Various tools
A black banana
A Nazi armband with swastika
My serious journalist instincts went into overdrive. I'd seen this type of thing before, but where? Oh yeah. IN EVERY TERRORIST MOVIE EVER MADE!
This minivan was a potential Trojan horse of death and destruction, and the strategy of local officials was apparently to bury it under enough tickets to smother the blast from any explosive device that may be concealed in the big, aluminum briefcase.
My mind raced. My vigilance soared. Somebody had to do something.
While I was smoking another cigarette, state police in Williamsport were closing off that city'sdowntown because a suspicious "package" had been left unattended on a city street.
It was a can of paint thinner, that, upon further investigation that included an X-ray, turned out to be a can of paint thinner. Police said it was likely left behind by a work crew. Call it silly to shut down a city over a sinister container of solvent, but, as we've heard ad nauseum from Homeland Insecurity Director Tom Ridge, et al, you just can't be too careful these days.
I went upstairs and called Scranton Parking Authority Director Jim Wintermantel. He wasn't in. I left a message. I called Public Safety Director Ray Hayes and got his voice mail. Rather than wait for the robotic voice to list 1,000 options before letting me leave a message, I decided to call back later.
Back down on the street, a woman who works nearby and did not want to be identified said she saw the van's apparent owner twice since it was parked. On the second occasion, she said she saw the "older man with a short, butchy haircut" loading the box containing the swastika armband into the back seat.
"He looked at the tickets and went on about his business," she said. "He didn't seem to be bothered by it."
"Who does this guy think he is?" I thought. Better yet, who is he?
A friend of a friend ran the minivan's plate for me. It came back registered to a guy with an address in East Stroudsburg. I dug up a phone number for the address, but it belonged to a different guy. I dialed it anyway, but the number has been disconnected.
So I called the FBI. The agent I spoke to seemed interested when I described the contents of the van, where it was parked and for how long. She said she'd run the plate and call me right back.
That was around 2 p.m. At 4:45, she still hadn't called back, so I called again. I was told she wasn't in, and that I should try again in the morning.
I hadn't heard back from Mr. Wintermantel, either, and it was probably too late to call Mr. Hayes, so I called it a day around 5. My wife and I walked past the van on the way to our car. At 11 p.m., WBRE-TV news had a story on the paint thinner that menaced Williamsport. My wife was at the computer, checking out Penn Avenue on the scrantontimes.com webcam.
The van was still there.
I called the FBI back on Thursday morning. The agent I talked to the day before said she ran the plate and a criminal background check on the owner. Because he had no warrants, she explained, there was nothing the FBI could do.
"You'll have to work with the city police to get it moved," she said.
I asked her if this same minivan could sit for what was now eight days in front of the FBI building. She said she didn't know.
I was pretty sure I did, but the agent was done talking. She's not supposed to speak to the media, she said. She wouldn't even give me her name.
A little later, I reached Mr. Wintermantel. He said he knew why I was calling. The van was brought to his attention Wednesday afternoon, he said, and it was "being checked out."
When I told him I had already checked it out and listed its contents, he said a few unprintable things that added up to: "You're kidding!"
I wasn't.
Mr. Wintermantel promised to call Mr. Hayes immediately and ask to have the van removed. A half-hour later, a police car and tow truck were in front of The Times building. It was gone 15 minutes later.
In fairness, Mr. Wintermantel didn't know about the contents of the minivan until I called him, and Mr. Hayes didn't even know it existed until Thursday morning.
When it was brought to their attention, it was removed post-haste. But why did it take eight days?
"It should have been towed earlier," Mr. Hayes admitted, but the police officers who let it sit may not have known they were authorized to do so. Incredibly, he said city ordinance requires the issue of a registered letter to the owner before a registered and inspected vehicle can be considered abandoned and towed. Police had the authority to tow it only because it was blocking city streetsweepers, he said.
So where is the minivan now? Sitting on the tow company lot, waiting for someone to investigate its contents. Mr. Hayes promised they would be checked out, but as of 3 p.m. Friday, the folks at the lot said no police had been there.
The vigilant, civic-minded American in me found this continued lack of urgency troubling, so I called Tom Ridge to see what he thought about it.
It's not easy to get the actual director of Homeland Insecurity on the phone. Color coding terrorist alerts and training truckers and plumbers as spies is a full-time job. Instead, I chatted with Ashley Snee, a spokesperson who seemed much too nice to be working for the federal government.
Ms. Snee said the contents of the minivan and the length of its stay were "definitely out of the ordinary," and that we "did the right thing" bringing it to the attention of local authorities.
She wasn't comfortable commenting on what those authorities did with the warning, but she did chuckle when I contrasted their response to the one raised by the paint thinner threat in Williamsport.
I chuckled, too, but if I ever see another mystery machine parked downtown, I'm calling Scooby-Doo.
CHRIS KELLY, the SaturDay columnist, is a suspicious character. Report him to the authorities at loudmouth72@hotmail.com.
The above column might be a fresh topic, but Kelly makes it stale by overwriting (as usual). And he only found the topic because it was literally parked outside the building where he stands to smoke umpteen times a day.
Part of the reason he gets away with laziness and pseudo-plagiarism is because he writes for a chickenshit paper. Mike Barnicle got canned for doing the sort of stuff Kelly did with the Sesame Street piece, but that's only because people pay attention to major metros.
Those who want to "alert the media" about him should tell Romanesko about the copycat Sesame Street column.
Is that 'stache real?
Although that column has a few good lines, it really serves to illustrate Kelly's limits as a columnist.
OK, he found an oddball story literally under his nose -- while outside taking a smoke -- and beat it into the ground at mind-numbing length. Every Kelly column I've ever read had been at least a third to a half longer than it should be. And those are the ones that are legitimate columns. Nobody's ever made him write to the prescribed columnist's length -- the 16- or 17-inch slot down the side of the page -- so he's never developed that kind of discipline. Lack of discipline eventually becomes laziness, and laziness becomes....well, you can see for yourself.
Cut the crap. This is not even close to Barnicle-style plagerism. At best C.K. borrowed an idea for a column based on a news event.
Did Krathhammer "plagerize" Cal Thomas because they both wrote about Pakistan? They both had similar opinions that they could have NEVER reached independently. Right?
The CK pile-on needs a reality check.
That's asinine. Kelly did not form an independent opinion on the Sesame Street video, he read the NY Times column, glommed onto their ideas and regurgitated them. If he even watched the video himself, I'd like to know about it.
And please don't equate two columnists writing about a world crisis like Pakistan on the same day to Kelly writing about a Sesame Street video a week after the Times. Give me a fucking break.
http://www.crosscut.com/mudville/9458/The+essential+Seattle+newspaper+columnist/
Meanwhile, from Romenesko, here's a Seattle writer talking about the essentials of a good metro columnist. Judge for yourself:
-- Have something to say. This sounds rudimentary, but there are many opinion writers who assemble facts that lack a point. Call that "analysis," and yes, time will tell, government must look seriously at this issue, blah, blah, etc., etc., but don't call it a readable column.
-- Show courage. It's easy to criticize a politician. It takes real guts to call b.s. on conventional wisdom. Westneat does that.
-- Have a brain. The best columnists see things the rest of us miss. Or ask questions that cut to the issue.
-- Get out of the office. It's amazing how few columnists actually leave the newsroom. Westneat recently traveled to Portland to ride that city's rail system.
-- Have a voice that wears well. Scolds get tiresome. (I know, I've failed that standard.)
-- Show range. The worst columnists get stuck on a few subjects. Tom Wolfe once warned columnists never to quote their kids or their spouses. A good columnist can move from cops to sports to the arts, from Roxbury to Northgate, and make them all interesting to a broad audience. From that we get a true sense of place.
-- Do it in 750 words or less. Not all good writers succeed in both the short and long form. One successful example is Terry McDermott, who wrote a fine column for The Seattle Times before moving to Los Angeles.
Wasn't it a coincidence to see today's lead story on the Poynter.org Web site?
This will merely add to the ethical stench that surrounds Times Shamrock and, by association, the rest of NEPA journalism.
You start with Larry's adventures in Cincinnati and the fact that Scranton was the only paper that would have him....national attention over why they wouldn't cover the Sherwood story....a string of unexplained perp walks...Ed Christine's bizarre rise and fall...Murf's fuxxup resulting in a libel suit that sent their source to jail...their billboard that appears to lead the cheers for the Casey campaign...CJR calling their Hasidic Jews piece anti-Semitic...the metro editor walking out on election night....Murf and Ed skipping out to help a nubile young thing move in on a Friday afternoon.
They sure don't need a plagiarism case to rear its ugly head right now.
Last year, I had a job interview a couple states away, some distance from Scranton, and when the boss lady saw Times Shamrock on the resume, she just took off on them: How can you work there, didn't you research how bad they are?
It really amazed me that their reputation had spread that far and sunk that low.
Things have only gotten worse since then.
3:41, I'm not trying to draw you out here, but can you elaborate on where you interviewed? I only ask because I've always found that most editors can't find Scranton on a map and cannot be expected to remember some Romenesko scandal (Casey, the Hasidim, etc.).
I'll also note that most of that stuff -- the Ed Christine Chronicles, Murphy sending his source to jail -- really isn't public information.
No, I can't.
But people who compete against Times Shamrock papers, people who belong to statewide newspaper groups, people who work in area journalism schools are totally on top of what goes on around here.
And this is the age of the Internets. You can't keep a secret anymore.
Google is your friend. Look up "Ed Christine" "metro editor."
Guess what's the first hit. Just guess.
Last year, I had a job interview a couple states away, some distance from Scranton, and when the boss lady saw Times Shamrock on the resume, she just took off on them: How can you work there, didn't you research how bad they are?
I smell bullshit. I have many contacts on many levels in the business and have never heard anything even remotely similar to that.
I call BS on that post BIGTIME!
.... Google is your friend. Look up "Ed Christine" "metro editor." ....
I did. All I see are a lot of whiny posts on a site that proclaims itself to be a Gossip site (this one).
I already knew this site makes NEPA media, and all those who work there, look bad. But it's hardly an authoritative source.
If I were interviewing anyone coming from TS, I doubt I'd ask anything more than what they thought of the site. And if they admitted loving it or posting here, I wouldn't hire them.
"Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all of the unhappy people."
http://images.despair.com/products/demotivators/demotivation.jpg
9:11, too bad. Most likely, you're a stooge who doesn't realize what kind of reputation the papers have around the region. If you're a boss, and I'm guessing you are, people you meet at professional news gatherings aren't going to ask you why your paper sucks. But they might ask your present or former employees.
9:24:
"Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all of the unhappy people."
Absolutely. That's the Times Shamrock way. How's that working out for you?
Everything is fine. What happens in NEPA stays in NEPA. Nobody else knows what goes on inside the Shamrock Wheel o' Pain.
Move along folks, no story here.
:)
Hey NEPA Media blog fag:
Who you callin' lazy? You've had this post up as the main headline since Monday. Get off your fat ass and start posting new entries, otherwise you have no right to call other writers "lazy." Otherwise, go the way of that other media nobody, Howard Beale, and wither on the vine.
"Hey NEPA Media blog fag:"
Nice to have Ed checking in.
Between Ed, Kelly and Murph, it's like Old Home Week around here.
Ya know...
I don't think the NEPA Media blog poster gets paid for this.
Unlike Kelly.
Kelly gets paid for this?
No Kelly column this weekend. Is he on vacation?
Perpetually.
Post a Comment