Clark Hoyt, in his "Public Editor" column in the New York Times, has written an insider account of the Joe O'Donnell fiasco at the Times. It's titled "Pictures Worth a Thousand Questions."
After a chain of communications, a former Times staffer, Gary Haynes, was the first to contact the paper with the news that its obituary might be erroneous. Haynes thought "...the newspaper might have taken the wrong picture from its files to illustrate O’Donnell’s obit.
"The truth" continues Hoyt, "was worse and much more painful. The Times—like the Associated Press, Time magazine, CBS News, The Tennessean in O’Donnell’s hometown of Nashville and other news organizations—had been taken in by a man who for years had inflated his life story.
"It was, said Bill McDonald, the editor of obituaries, 'our worst nightmare.'"
Hoyt notes ruefully that the story made him think of an old newsroom maxim: "If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out."
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Mike (Thanks to Chuck Albertson)
In a small bit of sychronicity, last week's New Yorker mag (cover date Sept 17) has an article by Mark Singer (OT aside: maybe the best magazine writer working in English) on the late Joyce Hatto, the British pianist who was at the center of a recent large plagiarism fraud. Hatto's husband, likely with her knowledge, stole recordings of the performances of other pianists and released them on his tiny record label under her name. She enjoyed, at the end of her life, widespread acclaim for a few years until the fraud was exposed.
I'm struck by how similar her story is to that of O'Donnell. Just as O'Donnell was a real professional news photographer -- but one of minor note at best -- Hatto was a real, if minor and largely unsuccessful, concert pianist. Playing amateur psychologist here, it looks like they both, late in their lives, eventually succumbed to disappointment at never achieving the recognition they had always dreamed of, and couldn't resist making a late grab for it, even if fraudulently.
Seems kind of a sad and very human tragedy to me more than anything else (without meaning, of course, to excuse the very real offense they committed against the actual authors of the works they stole).
Posted by: Eamon Hickey | Monday, 17 September 2007 at 11:39 AM