Editor loses job over 'Caddyshack' embellishment

[deutsey]

http://espn.go.com/moresports/news/2003/0707/1577560.html?partnersite=espn

ROSWELL, N.M. -- The sports editor of the Roswell Daily Record has been fired for fabricating part of a news story about a golf tournament in which he quoted a fictional character from the movie "Caddyshack."

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"It was tongue-in-cheek. It was sports. I was trying to be light and breezy. I was trying to put out a story that people might like to read," he said in a telephone interview.

SNIP

Bush said the story contained three fictitious paragraphs referring to a "Carl Spangler" who claimed to work at the course. In "Caddyshack," Bill Murray played a golf course worker named Carl Spackler.

Jones quoted "Spangler" as saying he invented a new kind of grass for the tournament. The quotation in Jones' story is taken directly from "Caddyshack."

" 'This is a hybrid ... of bluegrass, Kentucky bluegrass, featherbed bent and northern California sensemilia (sic),' " Spangler said. " 'The amazing stuff about this, is that you can play 36 holes on it in the afternoon, take it home and just get stoned to the bejeezus-belt that night on the stuff.' "

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[Heddi]

1. It's a funny story, BUT

he should be fired.

By embellishing this story (albeit in a funny way) he is questioning the credibility of the newspaper and all of its stories.

If this were to be 'passed', we could never get angry again at fabricated news stories in the future.

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. well, considering the idiocy of the fabrication

I'd let him go, too.

Had he been a little more creative, and made a subtle-but-clever allusion to caddyshack, that would be cool.

But in a newspaper, to manufacture a "spokesperson" who talks about getting stoned? That's well beyond satire or creativity, and just into dumbness.

Hopefully he has learned an important lesson about being creative and appropriate.