SMOKING GUN EMERGES IN LANDRY SITUATION

We’ve spent plenty of time over the past two days delving into the question of how and why written content from Chris Landry of Sportsnet.ca and Mike Lombardi of NationalFootballPost.com would contain so many glaring similarities. Though we know some of you don’t view this issue as interesting, plenty of you have expressed to us a belief that the dispute is both fascinating and deeply troubling, due to the stupidity and/or arrogance that would cause someone to think that, in the Internet age, full passages could be lifted from a web site by another web site without detection. And let’s be clear about what’s happening here. Someone has been getting paid for work that he hasn’t been doing. In essence, he’s been getting paid for work that someone else has done. It’s wrong, and it’s offensive to those of us in this business who from time to time get up well before dawn and then go to bed not long before the next one. By way of background, here’s a link to our first article on the subject, which was the result of a long-time league executive pointing out the similarities to us. In nine different instances, the words in one column were virtually identical to the words in the other one. (In an update, we mentioned that, on several other occasions this season, specific segments of the two men’s work product were closely similar if not identical.) In our second article, we explained that we were beginning to suspect that Landry might be the guilty party, because his December 1 column also included text that was identical (but for the omission of a hyphen) to a passage from the December 1 column by Andrew Brandt of NationalFootballPost.com. In our fourth article (our third article was just a simple “we haven’t heard anything” item), Lombardi and Brandt both went on the record to accuse Landry of plagiarism. In our fifth article, Landry responded with a general denial and a vague allegation that it was his work that had been plagiarized, and an explanation that he hasn’t had time to study the issue due to a health challenge with which his mother is dealing. In our sixth article, we presented the explanation that Landry provided to Tampa radio host Steve Duemig on Tuesday. Landry told Duemig by e-mail that Landry submits his columns at 3:00 a.m., that he’d heard from his colleagues at Sportsnet.ca that another site was using his stuff, and that Gil Brandt of NFL.com had done something similar to Landry last year. The kicker comes from a message posted on Wednesday by Andrew Brandt of NationalFootballPost.com. Writes Brandt: “The National Football Post became aware yesterday that Chris Landry copied certain segments of our content and published it on sportsnet.ca without our permission and without credit being given to our writers.We thank ProFootballTalk.com for bringing the issue to our attention.” Then, Brandt (a former high-level employee of the Packers) points out the striking similarities between two mid-November 2008 columns from Lombardi and Landry. The problem? Brandt says that Lombardi’s column was posted on November 17. And that Landry’s was posted four days later. And Brandt is right. Here’s the link to Lombardi’s column for November 17. And here’s the link to Landry’s column from four days later. In a plagiarism case, it’s the closest thing to a smoking gun. And coupled with the extensive similarities between the two writers’ work product documented in our prior stories, it’s enough evidence to lead a reasonable person to develop the opinion that Landry has on multiple occasions this season copied concepts, words, and phrases from Lombardi (and, on at least December 1, Andrew Brandt). There’s more. Landry’s archive at Sportsnet.ca has been altered to omit all columns written by Landry after January 28, 2008. Let’s think about that one for a moment. On Tuesday, all of Landry’s columns through December 1, 2008 appeared in Landry’s archive. On Wednesday, the stuff he has written and submitted throughout the 2008 football season is gone. (As of this posting, the cached version of the archive page still shows the post-January 22 content. Also, links to his individual columns still work; they just don’t show up anywhere on his archive. And we can’t find any of the disputed columns by navigating the Sportsnet.ca web site.) Here, one party is guilty of plagiarism, and that the other party is the victim of it. Since there was no content sharing arrangement between Lombardi and Landry, there can be no middle ground. By scrubbing Landry’s archive page to remove the postings that have been called into question, what message is Sportsnet.ca sending as to whether its employee is the victim, or the plagiarizer? Meanwhile, Sportsnet.ca has not responded to inquiries made by NFP and separately by us. We’re still willing to give Landry and Sportsnet.ca a chance to explain the situation. Landry has declined to go on the record with us, and he has not yet appeared on the safe haven provided by Steve Duemig’s radio show. (He’s scheduled to do so on Friday at 4:00 p.m.) Also, Landry has referred us to no one at Sportsnet.ca who can corroborate the specific times when his columns were posted. (By the way, the podcast from Duemig’s Wednesday show includes the host cutting off a caller who tried to point out the November 17/November 21 angle mentioned above. The call starts at 22:45 mark of the December 3 podcast. “There’s two on the 17th and two on the 21st,” Duemig insists. “Go back and read it again. Thank you.”) Finally, one of the items that still appears on Landry’s archive deals (ironically) with last year’s dominant NFL ethics scandal, known commonly as Spygate. Titled “Above The Law,” Landry had very strong words for Patriots coach Bill Belichick. “Just like I would not steal from their pockets,” Landry writes, “I would not steal their information. . . . I could also look myself in the mirror and sleep well at night, something I could not have done if I had cheated them. “Perhaps what Belichick lacks in a conscience he makes up for in arrogance. Knowing him as I do, Bill is sorry for the embarrassment that he has caused to himself and the organization but would do it again if he could be sure that he wouldn’t get caught. Seeing himself as the premier coach in the game, perhaps he felt superior and above everyone else.” If it turns out that Landry is the party who is guilty of plagiarism, he might be chewing on those words for a long, long, long time.