LANDRY DENIES PLAGIARISM

For those of you who didn’t follow the Live Blog of Chris Landry’s appearance on the Steve Duemig show and who don’t want to review it (though some of the reader comments were priceless), here’s the gist of it. Landry denied everything. Duemig asked Landry point blank whether he plagiarized content from Andrew Brandt and Mike Lombardi of NationalFootballPost.com, and Landry said that he did not. The problem, however, is that Duemig delved into no detail with Landry. For example, Duemig didn’t read quotes from Landry’s December 1 column and quotes from Lombardi’s December 1 column. And Duemig didn’t read to Landry the virtually identical paragraphs contained in Landry’s December 1 column and Brandt’s of that same date. Duemig also never mentioned at any time the real smoking gun -- the close similarities between portions of Lombardi’s November 17 column, and Landry’s column from four days later. Actually, Duemig never even mentioned, not a single time, never, the November 17/November 21 example that Brandt cited in publicly accusing Landry of plagiarism earlier this week. As to his status with Sportsnet.ca, the entity to whom Landry submitted his columns, Landry explained that Sportsnet.ca ended its relationship with him because the company didn’t want to face litigation from NFP. Let’s think about this, and let’s apply a little common sense. Landry says Sportsnet.ca opted to take a path that would make litigation less likely -- while at the same time announcing to the world on its own web site that Landry committed plagiarism. So, if Landry is innocent, Sportsnet.ca walked right through the front door of a lawsuit, in the process of trying to avoid one. Meanwhile, NFP has posted the following statement regarding Landry’s three-days-and-several-dollars-short (in our opinion) attempt to explain the situation: “We are disappointed that Chris Landry was given a forum to admit to plagiarizing our content and chose not to do so. We have clear and unequivocal evidence of Mr. Landry publishing our material hours — and in one instance — days after our doing so. Landry’s decision to copy our material almost verbatim without our consent and without attribution to our writers has already resulted in his termination from Sportsnet.ca following their inquiry and may further result in our pursuing legal action against him.” After talking with some folks about the situation over the past few days, we feared that Landry’s public comments on the matter would make the situation worse for himself instead of better. In our view, he made the situation worse. Then again, the situation would have been made dramatically worse for Landry if Duemig had asked truly tough questions, with meaningful follow-up and appropriate incredulity. And that’s likely why Landry chose to tell his side of the story to Duemig.