WSJ intern fired for faking quotes also had problems at Yale

J.K. Trotter of IvyGate.com reports that Liane Membis, the Wall Street Journal intern fired last month for fabricating quotes, also had problems while working for the Yale Daily News as an undergraduate.

Trotter writes, “In 2009, Membis — then a freshman — wrote an involved piece about Yale’s Marsh Botanic Garden, which later required an unusually lengthy correction that, until today, has gone unnoticed. (Due to several broken links — explained below — the note had languished in the paper’s content management system for ‘a couple years,’ an editor told us.)

“The note is brutal. Membis ‘inaccurately quoted’ a Yale professor (attributing to him statements that do not resemble anything he said, the note makes clear), misdescribed several ‘well-maintained’ greenhouses as ‘rickety,’ and included numerous factual errors in the article.

“At 187 words, the article’s correction is the longest the News has published in at least a decade, according to a review of News articles that were found to have contained ‘several’ or ‘numerous’ errors.

“Timothy Nelson, the professor quoted by Membis, told IvyGate that ‘it seemed [Membis] was describing another place altogether.

Read more here.