Missed It: Jeff Stahler Resigned From Columbus Dispatch On Friday

The cartoonist Jeff Stahler resigned from his position at the Columbus Dispatch on Friday, according to reports gathered over at Daily Cartoonist. Stahler had been accused of plagiarism including using an idea from a New Yorker cartoon; he resigned in the middle of a suspension from the newspaper so that they could investigate the charges.

I'm relatively sympathetic to ideas being occasionally re-used, at least in terms of acknowledging it can happen. My own experience coming up with a daily gag was that I found it tremendously difficult to discern what I was figuring out on my own and what I might have seen elsewhere, a gag or notion that might have settled into the back of my brain. I'm less sympathetic to incidents of tracing because of the extended deliberateness of that act, and I'm similarly discouraged by reports in this case of potential multiple incidents of gag swiping. We do live in gag-happy times. If you've ever tried to make a joke about a current news story, it's probably already been made by someone on Twitter -- try it; it's depressing. Still, the paper's concern is a very real one, particularly if there were several incidents, and I think an investigation was more than warranted. I'm unclear as to any possible motivation in quitting during the middle of something like that.

Poynter's write-up is here.
 
posted 3:50 am PST | Permalink
 

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