First of all, I’d like to point out that this is one of the main problems when you hire non-sex ed people — and especially marketing and/or entertainment writers — to write sex advice columns. They steal from the rest of us, get their sex info wrong and shame readers. What is it with these TV women writers thinking no one will notice: perhaps because it’s sex they feel it doesn’t need to be dealt with in any honest or professional fashion whatsoever? Likely. And why, when there are so many great sex writers who know how to give advice, the MSM publications are too scared, or ignorant, to hire a *real* sex educator? I’m sick of this douchebaggery. Like what Stacey Greenrock Woods just did to me in Esquire, and what Claudia Lonow just got caught doing to Dan Savage. Second of all, DO NOT fuck with my homeboy Dan Savage, ‘cuz not only will he bring it, but it makes me want to put a foot up your back door, too. From Poynter Online:

Title: “Lip Service” lifted, says NY Press editor
Posted By: Jim Romenesko

Statement from New York Press editor-in-chief David Blum:
January 24, 2008

It has come to our attention that some of the questions in this week’s debut of the New York Press’s new sex-advice column, “Lip Service,” were taken from past columns by Dan Savage, the nationally-syndicated sex-advice columnist and editor of The Stranger. The author of the column, Claudia Lonow, a television writer based in Los Angeles who had not previously written for a newspaper, used the questions to provide material for her inaugural column, in the absence of real questions from readers. It had been our understanding that the questions for her first column came from friends. She has told us she was unaware that using questions from Savage’s column was a breach of journalism ethics. She has offered her resignation, and we’ve accepted it. We apologize to our readers, and to Dan Savage, for this error in judgment.

Link. (also seen @ Gawker, see the stolen content before Lonow was caught here @ Jezebel, thanks, E!)

Updates: Rachel Kramer Bussel has an excellent, sharp piece in HuffPo about this, and nails the problem with sensationalized (read: bogus MSM) sex columns from another angle saying,

“Sex is a topic that people are always interested in, and always will be, yet instead of addressing it in a straightforward way, all too many media outlets choose to try to make sex “sexier” rather than giving readers enough credit to think logically and critically about the topic.”

Exactly — again, because it’s about sex doesn’t mean you should treat your readers like they’re stupid or shameful for wanting to read about/see/ask/discuss it. Meanwhile, Dan Savage responds — eloquently and with respectful professionalism, of course — quoted in the Seattle PI saying,

“I don’t think she did this on purpose,” Savage wrote in an e-mail Thursday. “The borrowing was an accident, not malicious, and doesn’t rise to the level of plagiarism, in my opinion. She could’ve avoided this … if she’d said, ‘I don’t have any letters yet, so here are some I swiped from ‘Savage Love.” And I would’ve given her my permission to use ‘em.”