07-13-2011 KC STAR DISMISSES COLUMNIST STEVE PENN In a stunning move that is reverberating through public relations and journalistic circles, the Kansas City Star has announced that it has dismissed veteran urban columnist Steve Penn for "using material that wasn't his and representing it as his own work." The move represents the first major editorial decision made by Mi-Ai Parish, 40, who took over the reins from Mark Zieman as President and Publisher at the newspaper June 20. Penn, 53, joined The Star in July 1980 and became a metro columnist in 2000. "In the normal editing process and a follow-up review, it was discovered that Penn had lifted material from press releases verbatim, in some cases presenting others’ conclusions and opinions as his own and without attribution," wrote the paper. "Editors found more than a dozen examples in Penn’s columns dating back to 2008." We value Steve’s many years of service to The Star,” said Mike Fannin, editor and vice president of the newspaper. The Star highlighted three examples where Penn took information directly from news releases.
Many PR practitioners' thoughts were summarized by one veteran communicator's note to Bottom Line: "The lines are blurred so much right now, I'm totally confused as to what's correct and what's not," he says. "I'd prefer that there is still journalistic integrity, and I'm sure there is, but it's hard to tell. "Competition from social media reporting is creating so much angst within the traditional media, that who knows what's ethical or not."
07-14-2011 DEFIES LOGIC "How Penn got as far as he did truly defies logic, but then again we are talking about The Star. As much as I detest how people complain about affirmative action, I think that is the only explanation for how got as far as he did. His columns were never interesting. He wrote glowingly of public figures who didn't deserve it. He never challenged people the way that Mike Hendricks and Barb Shelly do. But he was a black face that The Star could put on B-1. And that is all that people like Mark Zieman and Randy Smith cared about. I'm guessing that the lower-level editors_ both past and present_ who had to read his raw copy are not crying over this decision."
APPEARS BOGUS "I'm not sure what Journalism schools would teach on this issue but to me it appears bogus. If a PR release is sent to a reporter it seems to me that the reporter's ability to use it verbatim is implicit. Therefore I see no reason that you would have to provide attribution. The fact that he restated their opinions or conclusions would not be a problem if the reporter deemed them to be valid in my view."
NO HUGE CONFLICT "The lack of ethics in this case seem rather easy to discern... I find no huge conflict. It seems more like laziness then evildoing. But, the result is the same. Journalists MUST be like Caesar's wife." I’m stunned too that Steve is no longer employed at the paper. But the paper’s message is disingenuous. The paper cites he committed plagiarism but chooses not to use the term in its management-sponsored news release. “Using material that wasn’t his and representing it as his own work,” is a pretty softball-tossing approach to a serious issue. "And if anyone needs to figure out why management can’t be trusted or believed, reread Mark Zieman’s quote. How do you value someone or something for years when you admit a problem has occurred for years under your watch? "It appears to me the Kansas City Star management let a problem fester for a long time and chose to bury their collective heads in the sand. What’s their punishment other than the continual precipitous drop in readership and advertising revenue? "For full disclosure, I was a partner with the Kansas City Star in 2001-2002 as the anchor of the paper’s Kansas City Star Business Hour which aired on Business Radio 1190 KPHN. While I know Steve Penn, he was not a part of the show which was co-anchored by writer, editors and columnists from the paper’s business section." --Scott Simon
RULES HAVEN'T CHANGED "Who knows what’s ethical or not?” What a statement! All it takes is attribution, the rules haven’t changed. If you use someone else’s words, you give them credit. Ethical lines never blur, they only get ignored by people too lazy to adhere to them or trying to cover something up. Don't look back and think, "That was so great"...realize it at the time! " --Jeffrey Adams
FINDING WORK "It's going to be very hard for a veteran with his salary needs and his age to find work in this market. He should have been warned, not dismissed. Unless it was an excuse for generally substandard performance. I didn't see the stated reason, spanning over so long, was justification for firing rather than coaching. It shouldn't have been a career ender." --RadiomanKC
COLUMNIST? "And they still keep a certain worthless columnist? Geez. And yes, I will sign my name to that one." --Terry Knab
THE PITCH The Pitch's Peter Rugg weighed in on the Penn dismissal and took umbrage at remarks made by a PR pro on this site: http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/2011/07/steve_penn_fired.php
07-15-2011 Affirmative Action? "Another black columnist or reporter caught plagiarizing? I wish it were surprising, but it no longer is. As another commented, it's the result of tokenism, aka affirmative action, which serves to install mediocre people into jobs they cannot handle, leading to results such as this. The sooner people realize that African Americans need to drag themselves up by their bootstraps -- just like Asians and other minorities (including non-African American blacks with similar slave ancestry) are doing quite successfully -- the quicker they will get into positions such as that occupied by Steve Penn. "Affirmative action, which more properly should be called reverse discrimination, may once have been valid, but now it only serves to provide a not-so-subtle signal that the rest of society (and African Americans themselves) that black people are less intelligent than everyone else. Thank you for listening." ---George Jones
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