UNH prof cites Times reporter for lifting passages from book

Manchester Union Leader ^ | December 19, 2003 | Jody Record

[billorites]

DURHAM — When University of New Hampshire professor Blake Gumprecht read a recent New York Times article about kayaking down the Los Angeles River, the passages struck him as familiar.

Too familiar.

The story wasn’t just similar to his 1999 book, “The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth,” Gumprecht says, it was, in places, almost identical to pages he had written.

So the UNH assistant geography professor fired off an e-mail to Times editor Renee Murawski, alleging reporter Charlie LeDuff had lifted portions of his book for the newspaper article.

“What is most striking to me is how many times Mr. LeDuff’s article repeats information and ideas from a single page in my book — page one of the introduction. Coincidence? I think the preponderance of examples argues against that,” Gumprecht wrote.

“They responded pretty quickly, asking me to outline the parts that were similar,” Gumprecht said yesterday. “There were so many similarities to my book — to whole pages in my book. An editor I talked to said when he read the beginning of my book, having edited the story, it was pretty cut and dry.”

According to Gumprecht, the Times issued a correction on Dec. 8, saying LeDuff had consulted Gumprecht’s book during his research and had “distilled” parts of the story. The correction went on the say the reporter had independently confirmed facts recorded in Gumprecht’s book but admitted LeDuff should have credited the university professor’s work.

“You’d think after all that furor (over plagiarism charges against Times reporter Jason Blair), something like this wouldn’t happen,” Gumprecht said. “Overall, I’m happy with the way the Times as a newspaper responded. But I still think LeDuff owes me a phone call.”

The young reporter has contacted Gumprecht once, shortly after the UNH professor voiced his complaint.

“In the beginning of the conversation, he was very friendly. He said an earlier version of the article had referenced me and that it got cut,” Gumprecht said. “Then he said he’d only gotten one thing from the book and the rest he got elsewhere. He denied he did anything wrong.”

From there, the conversation became “more heated,” Gumprecht said, adding he thought LeDuff expected him to “roll over.”

“LeDuff thought the correction was completely without justification,” Gumprecht said, adding there were two things he didn’t like about the statement. “One was that it said he had verified everything from independent sources. The other is that the reporter’s name isn’t mentioned in the correction.”

The issue of checking other sources is troublesome to Gumprecht because of an esoteric reference on the first page of his book that talks about painting the river bottom blue. His research uncovered that notation in only one book, he said.

“As soon as I saw the mention of the river bottom being painted blue, I knew,” Gumprecht said.

A friend told Gumprecht about the front-page Times story, knowing he would be interested in anything written on the subject because of his book. Then someone else mentioned it to him, saying it sounded like “The Los Angeles River.”

[Peach]

Another Jason Blair in the making. The paper of record is losing subscribers and readers. tsk tsk

[mountaineer]

Looks like Charlie and Jayson were part of the same affirmative action hiring program at the Times, experience and writing skill irrelevant. Too bad no one there bothered to tell them not to plagiarize.