With cost-cuts hitting all newspapers, many have already stopped covering each professional sports event in their area, or shared such coverage with others. Among them, The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., using Yankees and Mets game stories from the Daily News of New York.

But the Asbury Park Press of Neptune, N.J., has taken it a step further. While already running Associated Press copy on many New Jersey Devils hockey game stories, the Gannett daily has now taken to publishing stories written by one Eric Marin, a Devils employee.

In a New York Times story today, Press Editor Hollis Towns states: “As long as it served our readers and we told them where that content was coming from, the readers were fine with it. I think journalists get hung up on certain lines of what's ethical more than the readers.”

But a look at a recent Marin story posted online last Thursday offered no indication he was a Devils employee, identifying him only as a correspondent. Sorry folks, that does not fly with me.