When did Jayson Blair start a Detroit sports blog?

Addendum 3/18/06 - JG, the owner of Third and Five, came forward with an explanation in the comments. The site was a work in progress and was basically using TWFE as a template. The site was not yet ready for public view, not yet fully edited, but I stumbled upon it. I'm fine with his explanation, and welcome JG to the Detroit blogosphere with open arms. Consider the hatchet buried... Now change that intro, JG!

I had a bit of a surprise yesterday.

As I was preparing to call it a night, just as many of us do, I did a Technorati search on my blog to see who's linking to me, and search the subjects I've been writing about. In this case, "Jon Kitna." They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but this caught me totally off guard. Click on the following pics for a better resolution.


Anything look even slightly familiar? Say the right sidebar?

Here's the intro for TWFE....

You really want to know? It's my uninformed and completely biased blatherings on Detroit sports. You may see the occasional pop culture rant and some lame attempts at humor. You have my apologies in advance. I do ask readers to remember one thing..."Ball don't lie."

Here's the intro for the doppelganger blog...

Uninformed and completely biased raves on sports. Tossed in the mixer is an occasional pop culture rant and some lame attempts at humor. For what it's worth, you have my apologies in advance. Readers are only asked to remember one statement that is oh-so-true..."Ball don't lie."

I don't know if I should laugh or be pissed. I'm feeling closer to pissed.

But it gets better.



He took my formating for links, and didn't even change the headline wording. Hell, he just copied my links, juggled the Detroit blog links around, and just decided not to bother altering the rest. I mean how many people link to both the Sports Frog and the Wayne Fontes Fan Club? So he goes to all that trouble, but he didn't bother to link to me? The blog he plagiarised from? Aren't I a valued member of the Detroit sports blog community too? What gives? I'm hurt. That's just bad form.

There is another piece of incriminating evidence. He actually has the nerve to take a pic from here, from this post on NHL scheduling. It's nowhere near a big deal, obviously, other than proof he's been to TWFE.


Taking the pic is nothing. Hell, it's just a pic I found on the web, but I'm positive he found it on TWFE. If you haven't noticed, each pic that appears on TWFE gets a specific name, usually in a joking reference to my post. In this case, it's named "where_the_nhl_rates_on_the_iq_chart." He didn't bother to change the pics name when he posted it to his blog. How Gil Grissom of me, eh?

Thing is, it looks like he put some thought into content. Why take all the shortcuts in regard to the formating and introduction? How hard is it to write your own intro and format your sidebar? It's one thing to look at other blogs for ideas, and make them yours. But plagiarism is not something I'm going to shrug off. I realize this isn't the scale of the Jayson Blair New York Times scandal, this is just a little blog that gets 40-50 visits on a good day. (Hey, it's over 80 visits today, cool!) But this is my little space of the web, and I'm going to protect it.

It was from reading the other local blogs (You all know who you are, as I've linked to you) that inspired me to jump in the blog waters with both feet. I've had a hella good time doing TWFE so far. 99.9% of the other fish in the Detroit blog pond have been über cool, and I've gotten wonderful feedback. I've even enjoyed getting called out, getting a little haterade, such as being designated a "Nattering Nabob of Negativity." That one made my day...

So I just wanted to get this out, as it was really bothering me. I hope whomever started the doppelganger blog makes the proper changes, as it'd be the right thing to do.

Tommorow it's back to Millen bashing, Leyland loving, Amaker questioning, and other general foolishness... Thanks for reading.