Posted on 04/24/2003 6:52:58 AM PDT by GailA
Plagiarist also falsified sources
By Tom Bailey Jr. baileytom@gomemphis.com April 24, 2003
A mysterious writer for the Tri-State Defender not only swiped stories from other newspapers and put his name on them, but fabricated sources in other articles.
A journalist described by the weekly newspaper as freelance writer "Larry Reeves" extensively quoted people whose existence can't be verified.
It happened in at least five stories over the past eight years, according to a review by The Commercial Appeal.
The stories were published in the Tri-State Defender or its sister newspapers, the New Pittsburgh Courier and Michigan Chronicle.
The made-up sources only broaden a plagiarism scandal that Tri-State Defender officials apologized for but don't want to investigate or talk about further.
"We're just really finished with this," editor and publisher Marzie G. Thomas said.
But even Reeves's existence - like his sources - couldn't be verified.
Thomas said she's never met him and doesn't know where he is.
He filed stories without coming to the office, she said.
However, the paper's managing editor from 1995 to 2002 said Wednesday she believes that "Larry Reeves" was actually Thomas Picou, chairman and CEO of the company that bought the Tri-State Defender in January.
"Whenever I questioned something in the story, the buck stopped there," Virginia Porter said.
Picou, former editor of the Chicago Defender, is the nephew of the late John H. Sengstacke, who founded the Tri-State Defender. This week, Picou said he's been a Tri-State Defender consultant since the mid-1990s.
He said he talked once to Larry Reeves seven or eight years ago by phone to check his credentials.
However, Porter said Picou was more than a consultant.
She said he was made, in effect, executive editor by former editor Audrey McGhee, even though Picou didn't live here.
Specifically, Picou, who worked and lived in Florida and Chicago, controlled three key pages, she said.
"Tommy had front page and page 3 and jump page (the page on which front-page stories are continued)," said Porter, 62, now semiretired in Kankakee, Ill.
She said the Defender laid her off in September after a personnel conflict with Picou.
From Chicago or Florida, Picou would design the three pages and send them to Memphis electronically, Porter said.
When she questioned Picou about the stories, he always had a ready answer and never referred her to Reeves, Porter said. "Or he'd say, 'Leave it like it is.' Or, 'Don't be such a fuddy duddy.'"
The Commercial Appeal tried unsuccessfully Wednesday to contact Picou for a response.
Earlier this week, Picou said one reason the Defender doesn't know Reeves's whereabouts is that the newspaper never paid him.
"A lot of people we don't pay," he said.
But Gale Jones Carson, now executive assistant to Mayor Willie Herenton, said the Defender paid her for stories she wrote in the late 1990s.
Despite working for the paper for two years, Carson said she never bumped into Reeves.
And Reeves would have done an extraordinary amount of work for free.
"Larry Reeves" had more than 140 bylines since the mid-1990s and sometimes claimed to have surveyed 100 or 200 people for a single article.
But it's tough to know what parts of the articles are true.
Reeves quoted Little Rock attorney Jason Jackson in a 2000 story on racial profiling.
But no attorney named Jason Jackson has been listed in the Arkansas Supreme Court database.
He quoted Kent State University sociology professor Helen B. Trent in a 1995 story about white people's misperceptions of black people.
Kent State checked records back 20 years and could find no such professor, university spokesman Ron Kirksey said.
Checking other traceable sources in "Larry Reeves" stories led to similar dead ends.
Last week, the Tri-State Defender apologized for unknowingly plagiarizing stories published by other weekly alternative newspapers around the country.
The apology came after a Memphis Flyer article that identified a half-dozen stories Reeves had plagiarized.
The stories originated from alternative weeklies in Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle and Oakland.
Plagiarism rears its head in even the most prestigious publications, said David Arant, a University of Memphis journalism professor.
Affected newspapers typically try to restore credibility by firing or disciplining the guilty reporters.
The Tri-State Defender has work to do, Arant suggested.
- Tom Bailey Jr.: 529-2388
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