The blogosphere’s abuzz, sorta, with speculation that Eureka Police Chief Garr Nielsen plagiarized his recent My Word piece in the Times-Standard. The exact same piece, word-for-word, appeared the week before in the Fresno Bee. The Journal called up the EPD for an explanation. Chief Nielsen was not in, but shortly thereafter he issued the following release:
I wish to clarify any confusion that may have arisen from the opinion piece published earlier this week in the Times Standard. This was a position piece adopted by the California Police Chiefs Association. The editorial was distributed to regional directors to be modified for local media and presented as a position supported by local chiefs. This is a common practice that is intended to distribute a consistent position.
I apologize for any confusion this may have caused regarding the authorship of the piece. There was no intent to claim it as original, but rather reflect consensus of opinion of California Chiefs.
ThanksGN
We called up Times-Standard Managing Editor Kimberly Wear, who said that when they received the My Word submission from Nielsen, “It didn’t say anywhere that it was a position paper.” As a general policy, she said, the T-S prefers not to run position papers as My Word submission. Might that have something to do with the definition of the word “My”?
This article appears in Cold Shoulders.
According to the dictionary, just about every article in the ‘my word’ section IS a position paper. And the use of the word prefer would seem to infer that they do sometimes. What are the exceptions? David Cobb’s ‘my word’ posits?
Well, that’s a point. Usually it’s some PERSON’s position, though. Ideally. I imagine that’s what Kim was getting at.
Not some factory press release thing written a million miles from here.
Yeah, their letter in the T-S this morning clarified the press release angle. I still think it is disingenuous compared to some of the position pieces run and modified press-releases filed by T-S as news. I agree, one should cite their sources, and Garr made the booboo, but hey, he’s a cop not a scholar. Maybe the T-S should do a little research before publishing stuff if this is so egregious.
As for the million miles, only a few orders of magnitude off…
If you want to see what members of the law enforcement community think of Garr Nielsen’s "my word submission",check out pacovilla.com, the CDCR website…they call him a liar and say Eureka should take his badge away. These are not bleeding heart liberals talking, these are priosn guards and parole agents calling Nielsen out as a liar no long worthy of his office because of dishonest behavior.
Perhaps our chief should have "written in his own words," but I’m just happy that he’s still here.
Hmmm. Seems a bit petty from my perspective while outside the curtain in KY. Ain’t y’all got something else more important to discuss?