By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
January 7, 2016
In maybe the biggest fuck you to its readers during the paper’s 184-year existence, the Detroit Free Press shockingly published a column late last night from disgraced columnist Drew Sharp.
And the piece wasn’t an apology for plagiarizing the work of David Harns, which this site has covered ad nauseam. There wasn’t a letter from publisher Joyce Jenereaux explaining why the Freep was allowing a thief to return to its pages. And there was not an article by editor Robert Huschka elaborating on why the paper made a decision to allow a man who lied to his boss about stealing a blogger’s work to continue his employment with the major daily.
There was no transparency. No explanation for Sharp’s absence from the newspaper since December 24th. No apology to David Harns. Just a column from the corrupt human debris about the Lions and Jim Caldwell.
(And fuck no, I am not providing a hyperlink to that article. Are you fucking kidding me?)
Accompanied by a Tweet from Dave Birkett, who should be absolutely embarrassed for himself ….
From Drew Sharp: Lions GM could be stuck with Caldwell https://t.co/jhTjyVyXvL via @freep
— Dave Birkett (@davebirkett) January 7, 2016
And what a joke Birkett has become over the last year. First, he decided it was his job to carry the water for Martha Ford after the Lions owner purged Martin Mayhew and Tom Lewand. Now he is trumpeting the return of a plagiarist troll on his Twitter feed. Have no shame, Mr. Birkett?
Honestly, if we did a blind “taste-test” of articles written by Birkett and actual employees of the Lions (Mike O’Hara and Tim Twentyman) over the last sixty days, you wouldn’t be able to determine the work of the paid shill versus the Freep’s Lions beat writer.
But Birkett’s sudden lack of integrity isn’t the story today. It’s his employer and the plagiarist they continue to employ.
Jenereaux, Huschka and sports editor Kevin Bull have all refused to respond to inquiries about Sharp’s deceit. And not just from the DSR. At least six other outlets have attempted to get to the bottom of Sharpghazi and the paper hasn’t responded to ANYONE.
I guess they think they can just sweep this under the rug. That this is going to go away. Well, they should know that not only is the public livid, there are many in their OWN SHOP who have contacted me about this ongoing embarrassment.
When I published the follow-up to our original story about Sharp, none other than Jim Schaefer “liked” the post on Twitter. You might remember Jim Schaefer. He is the dude who won the Freep a god-damn Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Kwame Kilpatrick.
I can only imagine what Schaefer thinks about sharing a masthead with this disingenuous bum.
Hell, a sports talk radio station even displayed more credibility than the Free Press. Sharp’s other employer demanded that Sharp issue an apology on the airwaves of Detroit Sports 105.1-FM before returning to his PM drive program with Matt Dery.
It will be curious to see if Sharp returns later this afternoon to that platform as well.
I am not sure where the DSR will go next regarding the paper’s abject failure to respond to this controversy. Stay tuned.
But I do have an idea what we can do about Sharp, and it comes from the man himself …..
Yep, we should stand outside the 105.1 studios and throw copies of David Harns’ original article about Miranda McCoy at this disgusting hypocrite.
Ya know, the one Sharp lifted.