I read the Times Union blogs sometimes, and comment occasionally. A couple of days ago I read a post on one (that I am not linking because it was not related at all to what I am going to write) where a brief mention was made that the newspaper had hired a new reporter.

The new reporter is a former editor of the Albany Student Press. Nothing earth-shattering there, except that he was the editor in 2005 when the front-page story plagiarized the Capital District Business Review on a story about the Albany Advocates and UAlbany's party school ranking. I still remember the case because I had the plagiarizer in my class a year before it happened, and I remember the editor's name because I now use the incident as an example when we cover ethics and academic dishonesty in my Toleration class. So I read the articles about the case every semester.

I guess it struck me especially because I just caught a student being dishonest, after a break for several semesters from discovering anyone.

I wonder whether this incident is discussed when he is interviewing for a job? I think it has to be the most significant learning experience of his life as an editor. Did he really learn from the incident, as he advised he would when he wrote the column acknowledging the "mistake" at that time?

His column then was very unconvincing to me. I'll be watching his TU reporting very carefully.