Copyright © 1998 by the Boston Phoenix, Inc. All rights reserved.

This Just In: Media

Scott Shuger's silent scream

By Dan Kennedy

Right after Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle's fabrication-and-plagiarism-induced resignation two months ago, Scott Shuger, who writes the "Today's Papers" column for the online magazine Slate, threatened to expose other journalistic ne'er-do-wells if their employers failed to do so first ("Don't Quote Me," News, August 28). Shuger's ransom note got wide play, including in the Monday media section of the New York Times.

But when the other shoe finally dropped, it was with a thud. Last Friday, Shuger directed his Slate readers to a 1500-word piece he'd written for Mojo Wire (http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/shuger.html), the online incarnation of the investigative magazine Mother Jones. The piece describes in some detail how, in the late 1980s, Los Angeles Times reporter Edwin Chen and Toronto Star reporter Bob Hepburn plagiarized &emdash; Chen in a book he'd written, Hepburn in a feature story for the Star. This time, though, no one noticed.

Maybe it's because Shuger had already written about Chen's and Hepburn's transgressions for the late Forbes MediaCritic (although no one noticed then, either). Maybe it's because Chen and Hepburn are not particularly well known. Or maybe it's because &emdash; as Shuger suggested in an interview with the Phoenix &emdash; journalists are queasy about holding their colleagues to the same standards as politicians who lie about sex or pilfer from others' speeches. (Just this past Monday, Shuger notes, the LA Times rehashed Senator Joe Biden's ancient misuse of a speech by former British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock.)

The Times' Washington bureau reported that Chen was traveling and could not be reached. Hepburn, now a top editor with the Star, told the Phoenix he was unaware of both Shuger's Mojo Wire piece and the earlier Forbes article. But he contradicted Shuger's contention that he had never been held to account for his sins, saying he lost his column and was publicly humiliated in the Canadian media. "I made a mistake," he says, "and I paid the price."