Great minds can think alike, but rarely identically

John Klimut
Editor in Chief

A coincidence can be a very suspicious thing.

Over the past few months, one of the Alestle's up and coming reporters worked diligently on the story of the 1970 murder of an SIUE graduate student in rural North Carolina. The Alestle ran the story in the Feb. 17 edition.

Andrew Lehman, assistant lifestyles editor and reporter, worked closely with the professional reporter who has been following the murder story for six years.

Mark I. Pinsky of the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel has been investigating the death of Nancy Dean Morgan and is now writing a book on the death. Pinsky contacted the Alestle for help with information regarding Morgan's time at SIUE and Lehman was the contact man.

Lehman stayed in touch with Pinsky through e-mail for two months and the two met a few weeks ago when Pinsky visited campus for homecoming and agreed to be interviewed by Lehman.

Lehman then wrote a 1,000-plus word story detailing how Pinsky's life has revolved around the murder of Morgan. Everyone here at the Alestle thought the story was very good, so we published it on the front page, lower right corner.

To clarify a few things, I must note that the Alestle is printed at the Edwardsville Intelligencer. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Intelligencer, it is the daily newspaper that serves the Edwardsville and Glen Carbon communities.

When the Alestle went to press on Feb. 16, we offered the Pinsky/Morgan story to the Intelligencer and asked if the Intelligencer could then send the story to The Associated Press wire service.

Offering stories to the Intelligencer is a common practice for the Alestle. It allows student work to be published in a commercial paper and gives the reporter one more clip for his or her portfolio.

However, it seems this time Lehman and the Alestle got burned.

If you had read the Thursday Alestle and then read the Tuesday edition of the Intelligencer, the front-page story in the upper right corner of the page was old news to you.

The Pinsky/Morgan story showed up and at first glance the staff here at the Alestle was happy to see Lehman's story run front page. However, at second glance we were horrified to see that the Pinsky/Morgan story was not the one written by Lehman but instead the byline read "By Gary Schneider of the Intelligencer."

It appears to us that Lehman's story was rewritten and with no credit to Lehman.

The similarities between the two stories are very obvious, the first being length. Both stories were roughly 1,000 words. Both stories contain very similar phrases and the kicker is the timing of it all. Not one week after the story was printed in the Alestle a different - but very similar - version shows up in the Intelligencer.

I'm not saying the Intelligencer stole the story, nor am I saying the newspaper didn't have permission to run it. I'm saying that when a story is so similar and it's obvious that the story is a rewrite, the courteous thing to do would be to at least credit Lehman somewhere in the story.