Last night we received a call from a reporter with the Harvard Crimson who informed us that he was writing an article about a column in the paper that had raised concerns. (The IvyGate blog picked up the story earlier this week after Harvard student Steve Melendez wrote about about it on his blog.) The column in question looked at incorrect usage of the word "literally" and used examples cited in a Slate column on the same topic without offering attribution. That resulted in an Editor's Note being appended to the Crimson column on October 16:
The Oct. 16, 2006 opinion column, "This Word is Killing Me, Literally," failed to reference the Slate Magazine article "The Word We Love to Hate" as a source for its citation of quotes from "The Great Gatsby" and "Little Women." The Crimson regrets this error.
In most cases, we told the Crimson reporter, that would suffice. Then we received a follow up call that raised the stakes. The reporter informed us that the column included this passage:
And when an NFL sportscaster said last month, talking about the Giants' comeback victory over the Eagles, that the winners "had literally put a bullet" in coach Andy Reid's head, I had a feeling that there wasn't much shooting going on. He did, however, manage to catch my attention. Considering I thought the Eagles were merely a 1970s rock band, it's clear that the sportscaster's sensationalism actually worked."
That example was cited on a blog linked to from the Slate article, but the problem was the writer admitted she never watched that football game. That elevated the incident from a failure of attribution to "pulling an Albom," as we call it. That means a reporter writes about an event as if they were there, even though they weren't. Albom's transgression led to him being suspended with pay and given "disciplinary action." When it happened with a freelancer at the Boston Globe, the paper
fired her. (The Globe has a story about the Harvard incident.)
In the end, the Crimson decided to fire the writer in question and retract the column. It also plans to review her previous work, which we suggested. All in all, an unfortunate situation.
