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In his first public comments about L'Affaire Sharp, Michigan blogger David Harns says he "was actually happy" at first that a Detroit daily spread awareness of "a resilient young woman" he wrote about last month.
MSU fan "Miranda [McCoy's] story of inspiration had already reached tens of thousands of people on isportsweb.com and was about to reach hundreds of thousands more via the reach of the Detroit Free Press," he posts Monday afternoon.
But then I read his []Sharp's] story and I immediately noticed three things:
1) [Drew] Sharp had somehow gained exclusive access to Connor Cook to get input/background on the story.
2) There were parts of the story that didn’t match what I wrote.
3) There were details in the story that looked very similar to mine.
David Harns' frank post Monday drops a hammer.
Harns, a medical imaging company employee who contributes Spartans coverage to isportsweb, says he wants "to set the record straight" after a Christmas Eve post by Justin Spiro at Detroit Sports Rag that accuses Sharp of plagiarizing Harns' work in a Dec. 3 column about McCoy, a 25-year-old who was paralyzed in a car crash, and MSU quarterback Cook. The Freep later added three links to isportsweb and an editor's note saying "this story has been updated to appropriately attribute some key details."
In his frank follow-up, the blogger says he contacted McCoy and the Ohio paraplegic "confirmed to me that she hadn’t talked to Sharp."
Harns says he emailed acting sports editor Kevin Bull at the Freep. "I think the only place he [Sharp] could have got details from her back story is from my article," the blogger says he wrote, adding:
"I certainly don’t want to make any accusations (because I don’t know everything that Drew did to source his story). But it might be something that should be looked at."
In a second message, Harns says he told Sharp's supervisor:
From all indications, it appears to me that Drew took a 3-4 minute conversation with Cook, grabbed the supporting background from my work (without attribution), and talked to no one else involved with the story. . . .
Bull agreed to look further into it. . . .
I still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss. . . . I checked with anyone and everyone I could think of who could have given Sharp the details that he used — Cook’s family, McCoy’s family, McCoy’s trainers, etc. Nobody checked out. It was becoming more and more clear that my hypothesis was correct: Sharp talked to Cook in the hallway for about 5 minutes, used my story to supplement the information he gained from that interview, and published it completely as his own work.
David Harns: "Should Sharp be suspended? Should he be fired? I don’t know." (LinkedIn photo)
The Ingham County blogger then drops this hammer in Monday's post:
On Monday evening, December 14, Bull and I talked on the phone. Bull had called Sharp in to the Free Press offices that day and, together, they listened to Sharp’s recorded interview with Cook. In doing so, it became evident that Sharp did not get all of the information he used for his article from that interview.
On the phone with me, Bull was livid about this. He was upset at the position that Sharp had put the Free Press in. He didn’t make any excuses and owned up to the fact that this was indeed an issue. For what it’s worth, he also said that Sharp was contrite. He apologized to me on behalf of the Detroit Free Press. I accepted his apology. . . .
the Detroit Free Press has done everything that I have asked them to do. They investigated my questions and corrected their mistakes. Beyond what I asked for, they offered me compensation and agreed to double it since it was going to charity [Shriner’s Children Hospital of Chicago].
It truly is none of my business as to how the Free Press handles this situation internally. Should Sharp be suspended? Should he be fired? I don’t know. That is up to the Detroit Free Press to decide. If you, reader, want to influence that discussion, then by all means, do so.
The part-time sportswriter concludes his post with a stirring appeal for something that's more important than a newspaper column, blog posts or possible discipline of a veteran journalist:
If everyone who reads this article is able to click this link and make a donation to Shriner’s of Chicago in honor of Miranda McCoy, together we’ll be able to make a huge, positive impact on children struggling through some of the most difficult times of their lives.
Regardless of what happens to Sharp and the Detroit Free Press, let’s turn this series of events into a net positive by raising funds for Shriner’s of Chicago (click here). Please join me in raising funds for this worthwhile organization today. Thank you.
Detroit Sports Rag, which broke the sport of Sharp's misdeed on Christmas Eve, notes in a linked summary of Harns' latest post that the Freep "let Sharp write SEVEN more pieces between Dec. 15 and Dec. 24. . . . Unbelievable."
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