SPORTSNET.CA ENDS LANDRY’S COLUMNS

[Editor’s note: In a prior version of this story, we stated that Sportsnet.ca “fired” Chris Landry. Lawyer Frank X. Santore contacted us to dispute the contention that Mr. Landry has been “fired” by Sportsnet.ca. Although we leave it to the reader to determine whether this is an exercise in semantics or something more substantive, we have decided to change the terminology of our original story. And so our official position is that Landry was not “fired” by Sportsnet.ca.] A media source has informed us that Sportsnet.ca will no longer publish the columns of Chris Landry as a result of the plagiarism issue that arose earlier this week. Landry is scheduled to appear on WDAE radio at 4:00 p.m. EST on Friday to address the claims. It’s unknown whether any of Landry’s other employers (such as the 11 NFL teams for whom he says that he consults) are contemplating similar action, or are investigating his work product for any evidence of plagiarism or other wrongdoing. For background on the story, here’s a fairly comprehensive item we posted last night. UPDATE: We have received a response from Sportsnet.ca to our original query. Said Dave Rashford, Director of Communications and Promotions at Rogers Sportsnet, “As soon as we found out that there was a potential problem we removed Chris’ material from our website. It will remain off for now, and he will remain off air for now.” SECOND UPDATE: Late Thursday afternoon, we became aware that Sportsnet.ca had posted an announcement on its site explaining that the columns of Chris Landry would no longer appear on the web site, due to Sportsnet’s conclusion that "[p]ortions of [Landry’s] columns published recently on Sportsnet.ca contained verbatim passages from columns that were previously published on nationalfootballpost.com.”