By David Scott
Boston Sports Media Watch

No matter what you think of the sometimes all-out frontal assault on the Boston Globe’s Ron Borges by, among others, Kerry Byrne and his Cold, Hard Football Facts, there is but one conclusion from the latest Borges flare-up: Borges must be at least suspended, if not fired, by the Boston Globe.

Editor & Publisher’s Joe Strupp is reporting that sports editor Joe Sullivan is “looking into” the matter. (An email from Shots to Sullivan was not returned on Monday afternoon. We have also emailed Mike Sando, the writer for the Tacoma News Tribune whose work Borges ‘borrowed’ from.)

Byrne’s revelations are too damning to ignore and the similarities are too much to be coincidental. And this explanation is woefully inadequate. There is really no explaining this one away - even if you accept the disclaimer that the Globe uses for its notes columns, which has long been a potential sticky-wicket.

The story has already gained national steam at both Deadspin and E&P and every minute the Globe and Sullivan dilly-dally is another minute of embarassment for the once-proud sports section.

Borges is a lightning rod for criticism and the recent Boston Magazine profile of him shows that he enjoys and thrives on the image he has created for himself. That’s the way he’s chosen to shape his career, and that’s his prerogative. But when complete sections of another writer’s words ( Sando’s) are taken almost verbatim, that goes beyond rabble-rousing and self-promotion. It hits at the very heart of the whole matter of a growing distrust of newspapers which was largely started at the Globe’s sister/daddy paper, The New York Times.

Joe Sullivan has already waited too long to properly react and act upon this situation. There is very little room for interpratation here. Borges cut and pasted another writer’s words and that is an unpardonable sin in his business.

It matters not if Borges is a ‘bully’ and a self-promoter. What matters now is that he is being perceived as a plagiarist and his employer needed to be proactive, not reactive. The clock is ticking.

. . . This could wind up damaging Borges all across the board as he has many side gigs including MSNBC and CN8, among others. Of course, as we’ve learned from Ken Davis formerly of the Hartford Courant, there is almost nothing that kills a sportswriter’s career. Davis, ironically, writes for MSNBC.com currently.

. . . Let’s give some credit to Kerry Byrne on all of this. Byrne has developed his own reputation as a hard-edged provider of insight and analysis. I recently was able to include him in a story I did for Boston Sports Review regarding some of the New Media figures of Boston’s blogosphere and Byrne was surely one of the most outspoken and provocative.

No matter what you think of Byrne (similar to the bully perceptions of Borges, I’d guess), he has pounced on a major story here and his news judgment can never be questioned. The guy works hard and has a bulldog mentality that is so often lacking across the Web.