Parts of a write up of Laura Marling‘s excellent show on Tuesday night appearing on the Telegraph’s website have been shown to be remarkably similar to a review posted online earlier by our friends at Wears The Trousers.
WTT’s article was written by Richard Steele, a frequent contributor for the magazine who’s reviewed such FFS favourites as Blue Roses, Slow Club and Emmy the Great.
The Telegraph.co.uk article is attributed to Jack Arnhold.
WTT Editor Alan Pedder said: “Our article went up at 10:35 yesterday and the Telegraph’s went up 7 hours later. It was brought to my attention by an astute commenter who flagged it up beneath our article.
“That article almost immediately became inactive, only to reappear at a new URL after Rich had made a complaint through the Telegraph website’s online submission form”
You can compare the articles yourself by going here and here. But here are a choice few phrases from the third paragraph, which is particularly similar.
First we have “with mainly new material… and lesser known B-sides… rather than audience favourites” from Richard’s article contrasted with “focusing mainly on new material and lesser known B-sides rather than audience favourites” in Arnhold’s article.
That’s followed by: “The Festival Hall crowd clearly had no complaints, lapping up the chance to preview the defiant and mature sound of hotly anticipated album number two” in WTT which becomes “The crowd offered no complaints, lapping up the chance to preview the mature and confident sound of Marling’s highly anticipated second album,” in the version published later.
Next in the Telegraph.co.uk piece comes: “There were also a few they could sing along to, by way of her biggest hits ‘Ghosts’, ‘My Manic & I’ and ‘Alas I Cannot Swim’,” which bears a striking similarity, we think you’ll agree, to WTT’s “They were duly rewarded with a few that they could sing along to, by way of ‘Ghosts’, ‘My Manic & I’ and ‘Alas I Cannot Swim’.”
Wears the Trousers is a magazine and website celebrating women in music. It was established in May 2005. Alan and his co-editor Charlotte Richardson Andrews are huge music fans with a real passion for the artists they cover.
Writer Richard has been in contact with Telegraph.co.uk’s customer services department, who told him they passed his comments on to the editorial team who referred them to the legal team. He has not yet heard from the editorial or legal teams.
For Folk’s Sake also contacted the website to ask about the incident, but has not yet received a reply.
Words: Lynn Roberts