New York — Rob Sgobbo, a young writer for the New York Daily News, has had a freelance story he wrote yanked from the Village Voice‘s website. He apparently fabricated sources and lied about his reporting.
Voice editor Tony Ortega says in an editor’s note that in a story examining for-profit colleges (here’s the cached version), Sgobbo “invented a character, ‘Tamicka Bourges,’ who claimed she had amassed a large debt at Berkeley College without obtaining a degree.”
Did he ever! Bourges’ sob story is central to Sgobbo’s story.
“My parents never made a lot of money, so I was hoping that with a business bachelor’s degree, I could go into banking,” says Bourges, who describes her high school performance as “OK.” She received B’s and C’s in most of her classes, but performed poorly on the SAT. “Harvard was out of the question,” she laughs.
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