Work history

Derringer is a blogger and former newspaper columnist. She was a columnist for the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, popular for her "snarky" comments. She lost her job, as did many on the News-Sentinel staff, as the circulation

Newspaper circulation

A newspaper's circulation is the number of copies it distributes on an average day. Circulation is one of the principal factors used to set advertising rates. Circulation is not always the same as copies sold, often called paid circulation, since some newspapers are distributed without cost to the...

 of the newspaper dropped.

She currently lives in a Detroit suburb, where she edits GrossePointeToday.com and blogs at NancyNall.com. She is married to Alan Derringer, an editor at The Detroit News

The Detroit News

The Detroit News is one of the two major newspapers in the U.S. city of Detroit, Michigan. The paper began in 1873, when it rented space in the rival Free Press's building. The News absorbed the Detroit Tribune on February 1, 1919, the Detroit Journal on July 21, 1922, and on November 7, 1960,...

.

Goeglein plagiarism

On February 29, 2008, Derringer blogged her discovery that Tim Goeglein, Assistant to the President of the United States

President of the United States

The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

, had plagiarized a guest column in the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel. She had been intrigued by Tim's reference to “A notable professor of philosophy at Dartmouth College

Dartmouth College

Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...

 in the last century, Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey”. The name was not familiar to Derringer. "But this name was so goofy, just for the hell of it, I Googled it", she wrote - and she found an 1998 article by professor Jeffrey Hart

Jeffrey Hart

Jeffrey Peter Hart and raised in New York, New York, is a cultural critic, professor emeritus of English at Dartmouth College, essayist, and columnist who lives in New Hampshire, United States. After two years as an undergraduate at Dartmouth, he transferred to Columbia University, where he...

 in The Dartmouth Review

The Dartmouth Review

The Dartmouth Review is a conservative, independent, bi-weekly newspaper at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire . It was founded in 1980 by disenchanted staffers—including Gregory Fossedal, Gordon Haff, Ben Hart, and Keeney Jones—from the college's daily newspaper, The Dartmouth. It...

almost identical to Goeglein's guest editorial appearing a decade later.

Derringer notified Leo Morris, editorial page editor of the News-Sentinel, who checked other columns submitted by Goeglein. Guest editorials in the News-Sentinel are neither assigned by the newspaper, nor are they paid for. Morris and others found at least 20 of the most recent 38 articles by Goeglein had plagiarism from the likes of Ben Stein

Ben Stein

Benjamin Jeremy "Ben" Stein is an American actor, writer, lawyer, and commentator on political and economic issues. He attained early success as a speechwriter for American presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford...

 and even the Pope

Pope

The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...

.

By late afternoon, Goeglein had resigned his $125,000 job.