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Disgraced ex-USA Today reporter now does charity work, lives in $2M home

avatar by Published July 25, 2011 9:41 am

Washington Post

The Washington Post’s Neely Tucker set out to find out what Jack Kelley — fired by USA Today in 2004 for sweeping and substantial plagiarism and fabrications — is doing now. “It is not clear whether Kelley is working now, but he does sometimes volunteer with Free the Children, a Toronto-based nonprofit that does education and development work around the world,” writes Tucker.

Kelley lives with his wife, Jacki, and their young daughter in a $2 million home in New Canaan. Jacki Kelley, once an advertising executive at USA Today, is now global chief executive for Universal McCann, a media agency based in New York. Messages left on the Kelleys’ home voice mail and at Jacki Kelley’s office were not returned. An express mail letter was returned after no one signed for three attempted deliveries.

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  • Anonymous

    Journalists may be curious as to what happened to a former journalist, but outside that, no one really cares, especially the public. It’s a waste of space. And just like a journalist to point out that he lives in a “$2 million” home. Honestly, if you don’t like the pay of journalism, go be a lawyer or something, but don’t be jealous of others. It’s an ugly habit to fall into.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_W7ENKYAWXF4ESZVPP5BL4XFHGQ Kathleen Adams

    I’m just guessing, of course, but presumably they didn’t start out with the premise, “Jack Kelley is doing nothing right now.” Somebody must have said, “I wonder what he’s doing?,” looked into it, and this is what was found. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. It would have been a more compelling story if he were doing something, of course, but just not the way things worked out.
     
    As for whether it should have been done, I have to say that I am often curious about what happens to these flagrant cases, and that includes Kelley.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=5300451 Ryan Holeywell

    Apparently being a cheat pays quite well. 

  • http://www.catheycommunications.com/blog Robert.R.Cathey

    Agreed, Sean. Journalistic equivalent of VH1′s “Where Are They Now?” meets… Geraldo Rivera’s “The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vault.”

  • Anonymous

    What Blair and Kelley did were “capital crimes” in journalism, and require the scarlet letter for life. But Sean — it is odd indeed.

    He is not in journalism any more.

    Maybe we journos should let it alone after 2 years — if the person has left the industry. We should be content with the pound of flesh, the humiliation and the dismissals we get within the first 90 days.

  • http://www.facebook.com/SeanScully Sean Scully

    Is there some reason for asking this question now? I find it puzzling that the Post would suddenly wonder “what’s Jack Kelley doing” when the answer seems to be “nothing.”