Steve Penn, fired Star columnist, sues McClatchy
A year ago, The Kansas City Star fired metro columnist Steve Penn after editors discovered he had submitted more than a dozen columns that were nearly verbatim copies of press releases. Now, Penn is suing McClatchy Newspapers Inc., the Star‘s owner, for defamation. He’s seeking $25,000 and punitive damages.
Penn, who joined the Star in 1980 and had been a columnist for a decade, claims that copying press releases was commonplace at the paper and throughout the field of journalism. His suit says part of his training at the paper even included using press releases and not attributing them to their source.
The suit says: “Nevertheless, one of those supervisors apparently objected to the widespread practice and without informing Plaintiff that it should no longer be followed, decided to “make an example” of Plaintiff and push for his firing.”
