Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Did Kitty Kelly plagiarize a blog? Can the NYT get a web site right?

According to an article in today's New York Times, Kitty Kelly is being sued for plagiarizing a blog in her book on the Bush family:

Seven paragraphs of material in the book, totaling about 400 words, repeat verbatim or closely track sections of Mr. Wilson's article, titled "George W. Bush's Lost Year in 1972 Alabama." The article, which can be found at www.southerner.net/blog/awolbush, was published on Feb. 2 on Mr. Wilson's Web site, Southerner Daily News. Ms. Kelley's book was released on Sept. 14.

But reminiscent of Bob Dole in the 1996 presidential debates, the Times omits the last five characters in the web site URL. Anyone attempting to locate the site specified by the Times gets a message reading, "This page cannot be found." The appropriate web site title is http://www.southerner.net/blog/awolbush.html.