SIU newspaper: when scoop turns to dupe

This undated family photo shows Caitlin Hadley, 10, with Patrick D. Trovillion, 24, a registered nurse in Marion, Ill. The two were convinced they were playing a part in a movie about a girl coping with her father and only relative being deployed to Iraq, Associated Press

Southern Illinois University at Carbondale's student newspaper, the Daily Egyptian, dismissed two columnists for plagiarism in 2004. Now the newspaper is investigating the role that a former editor in chief might have played in the paper's bogus coverage of an Army soldier and a daughter awaiting his return.

According to an apology and retraction by the Daily Egyptian, former SIU student Jaimie Reynolds accused Michael Brenner, editor in chief for the fall of 2004, of being the brains behind a scheme that fooled many in the newsroom and campus community.

Reynolds, who did not work for the newspaper, said that Brenner wanted to get his byline on an important story.

But Brenner denied the allegations and placed the blame squarely on his accuser.

"Many of the people I have been talking to the last couple of years have completely betrayed me," Brenner said.

The Daily Egyptian has yet to take a position in this he-said-she-said mystery.

"We don't know if he (Brenner) is guilty or not," current Editor in Chief Zack Creglow said. "We are still trying to get to the bottom of this."

Creglow was a reporter and city editor during the 2003 to 2004 period in which the Daily Egyptian followed the saga of Sgt. Dan Kennings and his daughter, Kodee. As the story went, 10-year-old Kodee Kennings was left in the care of a guardian because her mother was dead, and her father was deployed to Iraq.

Through Brenner's articles and the columns Kodee Kennings supposedly wrote, the Daily Egyptian documented the emotions and drama of the separation.

"People got caught up in the story," Creglow said. "When you hear the story of a little girl waiting for her father to come home, you want to believe it."

The Daily Egyptian's staff members said another reason they bought into the deception was that they actually met Kodee and Dan Kennings in person - or at least they thought they did.

Reynolds enlisted the help of 10-year-old Caitie Hadley from a family she knew. According to the girl's parents, Rich and Tawnya Hadley of Montpelier, Ind., Reynolds claimed to be casting for a documentary about a soldier and his daughter. The Hadleys agreed to let Reynolds drive their daughter four hours to Carbondale so she could participate.

Creglow recalled seeing Reynolds leading a little girl who she introduced as Kodee Kennings into the newsroom.

"Jamie would do a lot of the talking for Kodee," Creglow said. "We were told not to ask her certain questions because it was too painful."

Patrick Trovillion of Vienna, Ill., played the part of her father. Trovillion said Reynolds paid him $100 to make an appearance at the Daily Egyptian newsroom in fatigues and to thank the staff for their support.

The charade finally ended when news of Dan Kennings' death in battle reached the newspaper staff. Then they phoned the Army base in Fort Campbell, Ky., where he supposedly was stationed, but the staff found no official record of his military service or death.

A follow-up investigation by the Chicago Tribune uncovered Reynold's deceptions.

Yet Reynolds maintains she did not act alone.

The Tribune reported that Brenner created the characters, writing the Kodee Kennings columns and threatening Reynolds to go along with it.

William Recktenwald, a journalism professor at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, said he has seen no evidence of a any falsification of sources or content by the Daily Egyptian staff.

"This appears to be a calculated hoax orchestrated by a non-staff member," Recktenwald said in an e-mail interview.

But, Creglow said, the Daily Egyptian is taking the accusations against its former editor in chief and decorated reporter very seriously.

"We are in the process of checking out all of Brenner's stories on Kodee as well as other stories he has done for us," Creglow said. "It is going to take forever."

Brenner is the third member of the Daily Egyptian newsroom to have his work scrutinized suspiciously in recent years. In separate incidents, two columnists were found in 2004 to have plagiarized from other news sources - in one case, a Roger Ebert movie review.

Andy Horonzy, who was the Daily Egyptian's public editor at the time, said that the plagiarism was a result of inexperienced writers who did not fully appreciate the seriousness of their actions. Horonzy agreed with the "one-and-you're-done" disciplinary action taken against the two students.

But Horonzy said he did not see a strong link between those ethical violations and the recently exposed hoax.

"This was harder to characterize because of the emotional connection between the sources and the news staff," Horonzy said.

According to both Horonzy and Creglow, the entire newsroom became so personally invested in the story that they entirely compromised the paper's professionalism.

"A simple telephone call made to the Army before the first story ran, and the whole thing would have been stopped," Recktenwald said.