A Daily News education reporter was fired today after it was revealed that he fabricated a freelance story he wrote for the Village Voice. Rob Sgobbo, a 2010 graduate of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, was caught in the Jayson Blair-like scandal, and has since had his stories removed from places such as the News, Voice and Huffington Post.
According to Voice editor Tony Ortega, he allegedly "invented a character, 'Tamicka Bourges,' who claimed she had amassed a large debt at Berkeley College without obtaining a degree" in a story about for-profit "proprietary" colleges (you can see the cached story here). Berkeley College contacted the Voice to deny a spokeswoman quoted in the story had spoken to Sgobbo—and to say that Tamicka Bourges was not a student at the school.
Business Insider reports that Sgobbo was a top honor student who received the "Hechinger award for education journalism" last year. One former classmate recounted Sgobbo's popularity and abilities in the Boston Globe, while another former classmate told BI, "he honestly always did seem somewhat cocky about how easy it was for him to find good sources, but this is like, really brazen."
