Tag Archives: editor

How to Pitch A Journalist: Get Their Name Wrong

I once had this editor who would write the occasional feature. They weren’t that great, but when they hit the wire — as we journos would call the process whereby a story would be added to the wire service queue, appearing either on customers’ computer screens or on those long-gone ticker printers — they would… Read More »

Wikipedia Scalps a Journalist

Wikipedia isn’t always on the defensive, when it comes to getting things right: The Hawaii Reporter reports that the Honolulu Star-Bulletin has fired a reporter for plagiarism, after allegedly lifting material directly from Wikipedia: Honolulu Star-Bulletin Editor Frank Bridgewater said today in a nearly 200-word front-page letter to readers on Friday, the 13th of January,… Read More »

The Last Chapter in the Wikipedia Tale?

So we now know who was behind the Wikipedia Seigenthaler entry : the prankster has confessed. It started as a joke and ended up as a shot heard round the Internet, with the joker quitting his job and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, suffering a blow to its credibility. A man in Nashville, Tenn., has admitted… Read More »

The “Danger” of Wikipedia: “volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects”

An interesting piece in Editor & Publisher on The Danger of Wikipedia, that quotes a USA Today piece written by John Seigenthaler, a retired journalist who served as Robert Kennedy’s administrative assistant in the early 1960s, says that a very personal experience has convinced him that “Wikipedia is a flawed and irresponsible research tool”: Seigenthaler… Read More »