Yesterday Sevetri Wilson was dismissed from The Daily Reveille after we found that she had plagiarized parts of some of her columns word for word, including yesterday’s column entitled “U.S. talks about race again.”
The process was quite simple: we found a mistake, we corrected it and now we return to our mission of giving the LSU community the news it both wants and needs.
The sole reason students, administrators and outside readers take our stories seriously is because we follow strict ethical guidelines, check our facts and announce our corrections when appropriate.
For a newspaper to continue to keep that trust, it is necessary to be upfront and honest at all times with readers.
Our situation is unfortunately not unique. Even professional journalists at well-known national papers such as the New York Times, USA Today, Boston Globe, Washington Post and magazines such as the New Republic have found themselves confronting this issue.
While Wilson’s column was not written by a professional journalist at a professional daily, using the work of others is an unpardonable breach of the ethics that we, as journalists, cherish.
Like those other papers, we found a mistake and we have corrected it.
And it is just as easy – if not easier – for The Daily Reveille to lose trust as it is for the more established media outlets.
While people drum up conspiracy theories about our agendas and voice frustrations over coverage of particular issues, we are almost never questioned about whether we come up with our own work or whether our information is true.
It is our hope that we keep this trust with our readers so we can continue to cover the news that matters to this campus.
We apologize for this unfortunate incident and hope to regain the trust of the community we have served for almost 110 years.
 
Walter is a mass communication senior.
Contact him at [email protected]