Philadelphia Inquirer Sports Editor Fired After Plagiarism Incident

The Philadelphia Inquirer published a story on September 6th titled “Restricted free agent center Morgan Frost signs new contract with Flyers.” The byline is not given to a specific author but instead cites “staff reports” while this appears at the bottom of the article:

“Editor’s note: This article has been updated to remove a passage taken from a report by NBC10 without attribution.”

According to sources with knowledge of the situation, the sports editor who used the copy “without attribution” was fired.

The editorial note mentions “a report by NBC10,” though we’re told the article in question was written by Jordan Hall for NBC Sports Philadelphia. A minor technicality there. Hall’s story, “Frost gets his new contract after leading Flyers in scoring since Jan. 1,” was originally published on September 6th and updated on the 7th, at 1:22 p.m., about 20 minutes after the Flyers made the news official on Twitter:

DONE DEAL: We have signed forward @_morganfrost_10 to a two-year, $4.2 million contract ($2.1 million AAV). https://t.co/GI5NbDS269

— Philadelphia Flyers (@NHLFlyers) September 7, 2023

Both stories have been edited, so it’s unclear how much was lifted from the NBCSP article. We were able to view the initial Inquirer report via a Flyers fan post on Facebook, which does feature the editor’s name, but the original NBCSP story does not appear to be available anywhere. There are a couple of sentences in the first version of the Inquirer story that contain similarities to the edited NBCSP post, but 100% corroboration is impossible without seeing the 9/6 version of the Jordan Hall story. People we spoke to made it seem like this was the botching of a standard aggregation job.

Sources say the fired editor, working remotely from the west coast, joined the Inquirer in 2021 as part of the post-employee revolt hiring spree. The editor is still listed on the Inquirer’s staff list, but their LinkedIn profile was updated to reflect a September end date.

When reached for comment, an Inquirer spokesperson noted that the company does not discuss personnel matters.

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