Allan Detrich was working for the Toledo Blade, in Ohio. Since 1989. In 1998, He was a runner up for a Pulitzer price.

Detrich just resign, probably before he was fired.

The controversy bloomed after much of Ohio’s media descended on Bluffton University for the school’s first baseball game after their team was involved in a fatal bus accident March 2, 2007, in Atlanta that resulted in the death of five players. Before the game, the baseball team gathered in a circle on the playing field near five banners that were hanging on the outfield fence. The banners bore the names and uniform numbers of their five dead teammates. The Bluffton players removed their caps and dropped to one knee for a moment of silence or prayer. The banners formed the right-hand background in an extremely horizontal composition.

Nearly identical pictures of that moment ran large the next day on the front pages of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Dayton Daily News, The Lima News, and The Toledo Blade, each picture shot from nearly the identical angle by a photojournalist from each newspaper. In three of the large photographs a pair of blue-jean clad legs could be seen coming out underneath the banner on the far right-hand side of the image. The legs were missing from Detrich’s photograph; only grass and fence could be seen from the bottom of the banner down to the ground. Upon close examination of the photograph, evidence of digital alteration could be seen.

Complete story – and the four nearly identical photos, in a National Press Photographers Association article.

That is sad.