The Villager accuses the New York Times of stealing story ideas

Washington Post ^ | 08/04/03 | Howie Kurtz

[Pikamax]

washingtonpost.com The Villager, Imitated but No Longer Flattered

By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, August 4, 2003; Page C01

Some journalistic sins are crystal clear, like Jayson Blair plagiarizing out-of-town stories without leaving New York. And some situations are much murkier.

John Sutter, publisher of the Villager, says the New York Times has been stealing story ideas from his small Greenwich Village paper. There's no hint of plagiarism here; in each case, Times staffers did their own reporting and filed stories that read very differently. And it's hardly unusual for big-city papers, including The Washington Post, to follow up on reports in smaller community papers.

But in this case there appears to be a pattern of lifting ideas without credit.

Sutter cited 32 articles over the last three years on subjects that appeared first in the Villager. In 11 cases, one or more people quoted by the Villager are also quoted in the subsequent Times piece.

"At first we were flattered that the Times was picking up our stories," Sutter wrote a Times editor, "but that has long since turned to dismay and anger. . . . The weight of the evidence indicates lazy reporting."

[Arpege92]

Does this even surprise people?

[Chad Fairbanks]

Oh yeah? Well how many times did THEy interview Greg Packer, 38, Huntington LI???? HUh? Huh???

[martin_fierro]

Schadenfreude ping away!

[Liz]

More NYT dirty doings? My, my, the laughs just never end, do they?

[Timesink]

Schadenfreude

This is the New York Times Schadenfreude Ping List. Freepmail me to be added or dropped.

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[Xenalyte]

Is the Villager separate and distinct from the Village Voice? I'm not up to speed on my alternative papers.

[Timesink]

Thanks for the ping martin_fierro!

[=Intervention=]

The link doesn't work.

[Timesink]

Is the Villager separate and distinct from the Village Voice? I'm not up to speed on my alternative papers.

Totally separate. The VV is the 800-lb gorilla of "alternative" papers, while The Villager is so tiny it's often hard to find even in the Village. Here's The Villager's little web site.

[Pikamax]

direct link

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17135-2003Aug3.html

[Tacis]

When folks are obligated to have intimate relations with other folks on the payroll and being required to check everything with Moscow, Annan, and Castro, that doesn't leave a lot of time. They have to be efficient everywhere they can. I'm sure that should any of these folks at the NYT win one of the endless prizes that they award themselves, this guy might get some credit, somewhere.

[Ronin]

It doesn't me. The only reason Blair got caught is he was just too blatant about things. But this is old hat and goes on at a lot of papers.

[Clara Lou]

Putz Shulzberger runs a tight ship, doesn't he? /sarcasm

[Sonny M]

But this is old hat and goes on at a lot of papers.

Pretty much but one of the biggest knocks on the NY Times, by people who read it and like it, is that they don't break story's, some other paper will break it, or something will happen on the news, and they send there guys out there and do a big piece or heavily researched story on it.

The NY Times certainly has alot of contacts, and alot of connections, but they only use them, after a story has been made, they don't get "first dibs" type tips. I honestly never understood why they can't break a story first and be ahead of the pack.

[Ronin]

Sheer laziness, for the most part, and conceit.

They honestly would be surprised if you were to ask them that question.

The way they look at it, it is enough that they at NYT deign to notice the yokels and descend from heaven to cover their insignicant little world.

If questioned further they would roll their eyes and explain how utterly impossible it would be for any newspaper to have enough time, reporters or budget to staff all the places where the stories are likely to pop up so they have to do things this way.

Of course, that is no excuse for not giving credit where credit is due, but they don't consider it a big deal providing they get their own man/woman on the scene eventually.

[gcruse]

My new favorite song:

"Dirty Deeds and the New York Times."

[firebrand]

The New York Times is notorious for this. They steal everything and give it their own twist. The reporters poke through the pile of bound proofs from book publishers in order to do the subject first, before the book comes out. They are vultures.

They use their ridiculously out-of-proportion influence to squash what they find to be distasteful viewpoints that seem to be emerging.

Their sympathy for the perpetrator never fails to astound me. I think they sit around and discuss how to offend the sensibilities of the average commonsense reader. "Let's see: where would the reader's sympathies naturally lie? Right! Let's do a sympathetic story on the other side. Who's the victim in this situation? Good! Let's do a story on the victimizers and their problems."

[thegreatbeast]

It would appear that someone is eyeballing the Villager for stories. This shouldn't be a big case to break for the NYT.

[nopardons]

The Village Voice hasn't been considered to be an " alternative " paper in at least 40 years. It was " mainstream ', even during the '60s. The " alternative " paper of record, for the Village, in the 60s&70s was the East Village Other, or the EVO, as it was known...as opposed to the VV, which was and probably still is, called The Voice.

As with other N.Y.C. papers, The Voice is even sold ( and has been for many decades ) in other cities, such as Chicago. The EVO never got above 14th street, if it even ever got that far " uptown ". LOL