So this morning’s story on Stephen Glass’ plight to persuade the California Bar to grant him admission – written by Jack Shafer of Reuters – brings to light Glass’ latest argument regarding his moral character: He was tormented by his family into being a dishonest reporter. Is it a plausible defense? Or another fabrication/manipulation by Glass?

Glass, if you remember, fabricated story after story for the New Republic before he was fired and his stories scrutinized, post-publication … and was portrayed by Hayden Christensen in the movie, “Shattered Glass.”

Now, Shafer writes:

The legal argument under debate in California isn’t whether Glass made stuff up willy-nilly in his journalism. That verdict was delivered long ago; you can read the eye-popping details in Buzz Bissinger’s September 1998 Vanity Fair feature. The question before the California Supreme Court is the 39-year-old Glass’s current moral state, and whether he has sufficiently rehabilitated himself to practice law today.

Stephen Glass clearly has the gift to manipulate. It’s probably what would make him a good lawyer. But his lastest saga raises some questions in regards to plagiarism, and whatever motivation one may have to fabricate or plagiarize:

Is there any redemption for committing plagiarism?

Or for those who enable plagiarism?

Why do some journalists fabricate or plagiarize?

I got a little into it on Twitter this morning, and will expound here. Because I hate to make a point 140 characters at a time.

In the spring of 2009, a Google Alert landed in my email box with a link to a blogger’s story on a local hockey prospect … a story that included the quotes that ran in a story I wrote earlier that spring.

Houston, we have a problem.

My editor confronted the person who ran the blog. It was an unpleasant exchange, and I’m indebted to the editor for defending the work and the brand.

Later, I confronted the blogger. His answer? “The original links to your story didn’t work.” So, um, you lifted the quotes instead and used them in a completely different context? (The offending post was removed, by the way.)

Note to writers: Check your links. Better yet, interview someone yourself.

Another instance: my quotes and work were lifted again by a different outlet, work I’d written under a different editor.

Said editor would not handle the situation. “Imitation is a great form of flattery,” the editor told me, after I brought the instance to his attention.

So, wait. Plagiarism is flattery? Does that mean hell is just a sauna?

Even worse? Prior to that exchange, said editor told his staff to come to him whenever there was a problem with other media types lifting our stories. After that exchange, I asked a few more questions: Was this person really fighting for me? For my coworkers? For our department?

(Said editor is still employed and I am not. Go figure!)

It should be easy enough to know this much – don’t plagiarize. Or fabricate. Or let a good story get in the way of the facts. There’s no excuse for a lazy attempt at journalism. For fabrication. For cutting and pasting.

Or for blaming your parents as a reason for doing all these things.

The Stanley Cup ring. It’s a symbol of everything you’ve worked for – and what you’ve sacrificed – to reach the pinnacle of your sport.

It’s valuable – invaluable, in fact. The average cost of a Stanley Cup ring is more than enough to help finance a home or a college education. But consider the other cost. Consider the sweat equity of the spring. The bumps, bruises, sprains, strains and breaks that were iced down, taped up, frozen and ignored in the pursuit of the greatest prize in the sport. The time away from your family and friends for another surreal night at the rink in April, May and June. The countless razors that were left untouched through the course of the spring.

And it got lost. Though chances are, it was probably and regretfully not forgotten.

Via Yahoo’s Puck Daddy, today’s Calgary Sun reports that Theo Fleury’s Stanley Cup ring from 1989 has been found – and a Good Samaritan has put out a “Desperately Seeking Susan” type ad on Craig’s List, cryptically searching for the ring’s rightful owner.

I just gotta know one thing, though – how do you lose something so small, that represents and costs so much?

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, right?

Hockey rinks across North America pick one night a year that allows a toy to become a projectile. The stuffed animal, a staple of childhood and a talisman of innocence … gets the chance to fly.

After the home team scores the first goal on the designated “Teddy Bear Toss” night, fans launch their stuffed animals into the air and to the ice, one of thousands that will be headed to a better place.

Now there’s no magic that comes into this happening. Instead, it’s a byproduct of a smart marketing department, fans willing to part with their good toys and a collective desire to give to charity – children in need, children in the hospital during the holidays instead of being at home, children without families …

The Teddy Bear Toss isn’t just about the teddies – some of the kids and their families have heartbreaking, yet inspiring stories.

And, frankly, it’s one of the best traditions in hockey.

The teddy bear toss is popular in Canadian junior hockey as a promotional and charity event, though you probably don’t see the tradition in the NHL for a few reasons including: one, liability issues and two, it takes more time to clean up the toys that are thrown onto the ice than it does to throw them.

But the phenomenon of thousands of flying teddy bears certainly creates a spectacle – and a YouTube sensation.

Last year in Calgary, during a Western Hockey League game, more than 23,000 stuffed animals were tossed to the ice in a span of less than four minutes (per the Calgary Herald). It took nearly 40 minutes – delaying the game – to collect all of the toys and to do ice maintenance. At one point during the toss, benches were cleared and players went to their respective dressing rooms. What else was there to do besides wait?

This year, the fans in Calgary outdid themselves, throwing more than 25,000 stuffed animals to the ice. That’s 25,000 good homes, you know? (via Puck Daddy)

Saturday in Hershey, the Bears fans made it rain. Jason Chaimovich, vice president of communications for the American Hockey League, sent this video across via his Twitter account. (@jchaimo)

And this one in Kamloops, B.C., from HockeyProspect.tv, via Jerome Berube, a producer for the site. (@Jerome_Berube) There aren’t a lot of bears as compared to Calgary, but the WHL play-by-play guy dresses it up with the call.

Now, with this time of the year, the updates of hockey arenas having teddy bear tosses are coming across Twitter … and there are no accompanying visuals. It’s like ordering a bloody mary … and getting a sad concoction of tomato juice, Red Hot sauce and cheap vodka. No kick, no power, no oomph.

Scribes, fans, PR peeps, I implore you – post the hell out of the teddy bear toss. Videos, photos, testimonials, befuddled teddy bears. And if you can, give it this hashtag: #teddybeartoss

Besides, what kid doesn’t love a teddy bear? Or 25,000 of them?

Leggings.

I despise leggings. I despise leggings even more when leggings are not worn appropriately by women – when they are worn as pants, in lieu of pants. And worn to work.

Because the world does not need to see the crease in your butt, the lines of your panties or the folds of your nether regions. Not sexy. And not appropriate for the work place.

And guys, you’re complicit in this, too. Like when you show up in a t-shirt, busted cargo shorts and ratty flip-flops to the job, feeling comfortable but looking like you just came in from an afternoon keg party instead of preparing for your next assignment.

So when you show up to work dressed like you’re going to the gym, a frat party or to a sleepover, your credibility diminishes. It sends a message: Are you at all serious about work? Do you want others to take you seriously? Are you more interested in picking up men by wearing tight clothing than completing the task that puts money in your wallet? Would you rather be comfortable in busted cargo shorts than be credible in a button-down and khakis?

What ever happened to the dress code, anyways?

It’s not worth the energy to tell you what to wear and what not to wear. But keep this in mind:

Presentation is important.

A handful of employees at the Colorado Springs Gazette won’t be going back to work on Monday. And this saddens me.

http://www.gazette.com/news/gazette-129494-first-put.html

I just gotta know …

Will the online component carry the weight – and the clout – that print journalism is losing?

And, more importantly, how does the Colorado Springs Gazette – or any paper that’s making cuts to the newsroom – expect to “deeply connect with the readers,” let alone forge a connection with the readers … when you cut the people who go out and work with and among the readers? When there is no one left to engage with readers? How will electronic connections forge relationships in the community, in lieu of initial and continued face-to-face communication?

I never saw Rob Bellamy play hockey at the University of Maine – his last year in Orono was my last year covering high school sports.

But last spring, one of Bellamy’s videos landed in my inbox – his cover of Ray Lamontagne’s “Trouble.” As I watched the video at my desk, I thought of something – in general, we don’t really know much about the athletes we cover, watch or read about. There’s a defined line between being friendly with someone and being friends. No, let me rephrase that. If you’re a reporter in any medium, there’s a very defined line between asking questions and getting to know a subject personally. Most of the time, you can’t cross it. And in the same light, your subject probably doesn’t want to cross it.

Yet in showing his music to the world, Bellamy put his passion out there. It’s not an easy thing to do, to open yourself up to others, to their opinions and, potentially, to scrutiny.

http://www.pressherald.com/sports/whole-new-gig-on-the-horizon-for-rob-bellamy_2011-05-16.html

Working on and writing this story brought up another issue – a coworker asked another coworker about this story, “Why is this important? Why is this even in the paper?” (The newsroom is a strange incubator – someone else’s words will almost always get back to you.)

If you’re a reporter, there’s something to be said for generating offbeat, unique stories, ideas that come from “outside the box.” And at newspapers, even with the online component becoming crucial in the news cycle, these kinds of stories are diminishing – smaller sections, smaller staffs, smaller budgets, smaller windows of time to do quality work …

Likewise, the media and the fans make athletes very one-dimensional – and athletes sometimes don’t make themselves multi-dimensional, maybe out of defense for themselves. When it seems like everyone wants a piece of you, you don’t want to give away a lot about your true self.

Besides, isn’t music a universal thing?

At Maine, Bellamy was a fearless right wing known for his aggressive style of play. But away from Alfond Arena he listened to music and thought about how he would write a song about his own personal experiences. Sometimes he recorded videos of himself playing the guitar and posted them on YouTube — videos he later took down. He’d sing for his friends and family, who encouraged him to pursue music. “I didn’t take it serious, though,” Bellamy said. “I had a lot of work to do. But I kept practicing and practicing, and I started playing in front of more people. People kept saying the same thing, and I thought, ‘Maybe they’re right.’ “

My name is Rachel, and I’m a Dale Hunter fan.

There. I admitted the problem. That’s the first step in the road to recovery, isn’t it?

Though I grew up in Maryland, I’m not a Washington Capitals fan. I like to joke that I was one of the thousand or so who knew the DC area had an NHL team before 2006. (And, yes, I own a Geoff Courtnall Capitals jersey, circa 1989.)

But Dale Hunter carved his place in Washington sports in the time he spent with the Capitals, playing in Landover and then in the District. Among his NHL stats? 1,020 points and 3,565 penalty minutes in 1,407 games with the Quebec Nordiques, the Capitals and the Colorado Avalanche.

And I knew that watching all those hockey games on Home Team Sports and SportsChannel America, in lieu of doing homework, would pay off somehow …

One of the more unique moments of my tenure at my former paper was when I got to interview Dale Hunter’s son, Dylan, who played for the AHL’s Portland Pirates during the 2008-2009 season, as I was working on a story on faceoff specialists in hockey.

A week earlier I’d met the son of Caps commentator Craig Laughlin, who assigned me a task. When I met Dylan Hunter it was less of an interview and more along the lines of this: “Dylan, I’m under strict orders from Kyle Laughlin to tell you he says hello. And I remember you running around Piney Orchard when you were about six years old.”

He was stunned that this random woman he’d just met would bring up pieces of his past. And we talked less about faceoffs and more about the time he spent living in Maryland, about six or seven miles from where I grew up, and the people we had in common. We talked about John Tavares, who was on his way to becoming the NHL’s No. 1 draft pick that year – a player whom Hunter regarded as one of the best faceoff specialists he’d seen to that point in the time he’d played hockey.

Then, Hunter told me what his father, Dale, told him when he was struggling to win faceoffs. And it gave a little insight into how Dale Hunter thought as a hockey player.

“Watch the official’s hand right before the draw,” Dylan Hunter recalled his father telling him. “Don’t watch the puck. Watch the hands.”

Dale Hunter was the face of all those Washington Capitals teams in the 1990s. If Rod Langway was the Secretary of Defense, the mainstay on the blueline, the Dale Hunter led the special ops. Hunter played with a hardened edge. He was a player who wasn’t afraid to mix things up, a renegade of sorts, both overt and covert. And he was an NHL pest before it being an NHL pest was in vogue.

TSN named Hunter one of the NHL’s 10 most hated players – No. 7, in fact. And he will probably never be absolved of one of the league’s more dubious moments in the 1990s – his hit on Pierre Turgeon during the 1993 playoffs. And from the outside, that may become part of the definition of his NHL legacy.

Yet, at the risk of sounding beyond creepy, if you looked into his eyes, an intense, almost scary competitive fire burned in them. Heck, after reading and watching all the coverage of his first few days on the job, that fire still burns in them.

But here’s the catch – and the basis of my admission. Not only am I a Dale Hunter fan … but I’m also a Pittsburgh Penguins fan. Something’s got to give, right?