Mike Donila – Newspaper Reporting ain’t That Swift

Mike Donila of the News Sentinel had a story in the Saturday edition that appeared to take information from an August 28 and October 28, 2010 blog posts from here at Brian’s Blog. It seems that bloggers and commenter’s quickly began commenting on the knoxnews website and the supposed similarities between Donila’s November 6 story and our blog posts. In the comments it was mentioned that Duncan III had informed Brian’s Blog that Donila brought a copy of our blog posts during his interview with Duncan III. Donila admits that yes, he printed out the blog post and took it to the Duncan III interview but didn’t feel that he should credit Brian’s Blog as his source. What is most interesting is that in Donila’s explanation of his “work”. It is that he began working on this story on October 22. So, Scripps pays someone a full-time salary to work 14 calendar days to publish a story? Now we know why Scripps takes the newspaper business away from the profits and loss of it’s other business interest. Brian’s Blog doesn’t need 14 calendar days to give you a glimpse inside our county government. Interestingly, Donila has resorted to sending condescending, negative tweets to me.