nina-sumner

Update: 11/22: An update is at the bottom of this piece.

Back in late August, the non-profit newspaper The Local Reporter said that they would soon be announcing a new board. Three months later, no new board has been revealed, but the paper – which has close ties to a local organization with a PAC – released a survey asking if they should change their name.

This past week, the paper’s 8th editor (previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously) was removed from the website, without explanation, and dozens of obituaries also disappeared at some point in recent weeks. 

That’s not the biggest head scratcher.

Over the past four months, The Local Reporter has published 12 pieces by an author named “Nina C. Sumner,” who also appears under the byline “Nina Sumsy.” 

It is unclear if “Nina C. Sumner” is a real person or based in the United States. The email address appears to be located in Eastern Europe, and the byline appears on websites like SmallBusinessCurrents. com, MNTrips. com, and AllThingsSupplyChain. com, all of which appear to be link farming websites.

The 12 Sumner/Sumsy pieces on The Local Reporter website are unusual – injected into several are links to affiliate websites, one discusses Orange County, CA (not Orange County, NC – where we live) and many have quotes and paragraphs directly lifted or paraphrased from other sources, including WNKY in Kentucky, Inside Carolina, The Daily Tar Heel, UNC.edu, and Chapelboro.com. 

Here’s an example:

On November 21, 2024, The Local Reporter published a piece entitled “Kentucky Transportation Cabinet District Three intensifies relief efforts post-Hurricane Helene” by “Correspondent Nina Sumner.” 

Some of the phrasing seemed odd, and out of scope for a publication that purports to only cover Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Southern Orange County. I googled it, and immediately found a piece entitled “Kentucky Transportation officials head to North Carolina to aid clean-up efforts” published on November 19, 2024 by Riley Guertin for WNKY. Here are the first paragraphs, side by side. The colors correspond to direct plagiarism or paraphrasing.

This isn’t the only example.

Over the past four months, The Local Reporter has published a dozen pieces from Sumner/Sumsy. After doing an in-depth review, Triangle Blog Blog has found dozens of passages lifted or paraphrased from previously published material, or that contain links to questionable link farming websites.

A refresh on The Local Reporter


Before we detail the results of the review, it’s worth revisiting The Local Reporter, which launched 5 years ago. As we’ve written before (and again and again), The Local Reporter is unique in our local media ecosystem in that:

  • All three board members of Friends of Local Journalism, the non-profit organization running The Local Reporter, were leaders in CHALT, a local organization with an influential political PAC, and remained in CHALT leadership roles for years after The Local Reporter launched in 2019. Unlike most non-profit newsroom boards, they take an active role in the newsroom and have had access to the editorial email box.
  • In the past, the paper has omitted bylines, a masthead, relationships between quoted sources and editors, reprinted material directly from the CHALT website, and omitted political coverage of certain candidates that CHALT opposed in previous election cycles.
  • They were removed or asked not to return to LION Publishers and INN, two prestigious non-profit news consortiums.
  • They don’t respond to requests for comment.
  • They have churned through eight editors in four years, including one who ran the paper from Florida and a former elected official.
  • They routinely interview leaders within CHALT, their organization with a PAC, without identifying them.
  • On their 2022 990, their board members each claim to work 20 hours/week on the publication. This isn’t the way non-profit news organizations are typically structured.
  • They fundraised against a connection with UNC’s journalism school. One problem: There’s no connection. 
  • Student reporters in the past have been told who to interview, what questions to ask, and had their copy changed substantially before publication. Entire pieces have changed or been deleted without any editorial note, typically after our reporting points out problems.
  • They previously started a Kickstarter that offered access to the reporter for high dollar contributors. After our reporting, they canceled it.

We have a full and complete timeline here, if you want even more details.

The results of our recent investigation

Returning back to the dozen pieces published over the past few months…

On November 12, 2024, The Local Reporter published a piece from Sumner entitled “Where to eat, stay, and explore near Chapel Hill this holiday season.” Upon first glance, the piece appears normal – it’s about Fearrington House Restaurant and the Hillsborough Colonial Inn – but it links out to two link-farming websites, and heavily paraphrases a Forbes Travel Guide article.

Five days before, on November 7, 2024, The Local Reporter published a piece from Sumner previewing the 2025 Tar Heels baseball season. The piece lifts direct quotes and paraphrases passages from an October 31, 2024 piece by Grace Nugent for Inside Carolina. The Local Reporter piece also links to a website called Baseball Biographies, which appears to be a link farming website.

On October 30, 2024, The Local Reporter published a piece from Sumner entitled “Trunk-or-Treat Halloween highlights and upcoming weekend events in Chapel Hill.” It inexplicably veers off from discussing Halloween events to touting the Chrysler Pacificia minivan, which links out to a link farming website. It also heavily paraphrases and takes quotes from Caroline King’s October 27, 2024 piece in The Daily Tar Heel entitled “Haunted Hill treats Chapel Hill families to community, candy, celebration.”

On October 16, 2024, The Local Reporter published a piece from Sumner entitled “UNC-Chapel Hill apprenticeship program creates opportunities in technical trades.” It takes direct quotes and paraphrases this October 4, 2024 piece published on UNC.edu entitled “Facilities Services apprenticeships grow talent from within.” The Local Reporter piece also links to a website called Contractor Nerd, which appears to be a a link farming website.

And so on. Every piece by Sumner paraphrases an existing piece, takes direct quotes from that piece, and links out to untrustworthy websites. This is plagiarism.

When did this start?

The Local Reporter started publishing pieces by “Nina Sumsy” back in June,and initially listed the author as a “guest columnist.” In the first piece, published on June 19th, 2024, “Sumsy” pens a column with the headline “The healing power of creativity: how artistic expression can support mental health.”

There’s just one problem: The piece was about art events in Orange County, CA. We live in Orange County, NC. (The piece also has a section about AI job takeovers, with another link to a questionable website.) This raises questions such as:

  • Does the managing editor, Michelle Cassell, read submitted pieces before publishing them?
  • Does Cassell click on links before publishing these pieces?
  • How did they publish 12 pieces from this “author”?

What is happening here?

Here, I should state that the blogblog receives about 30 queries a week from “people” who want to submit pieces for the blog, if they can “add a link” into the content. This is a spammer scam, as detailed in this Fast Company piece.

Basically, spammers write to thousands of websites and say they’ll offer free content, or will write something of your choosing – for free. (Sometimes they’ll also offer to pay you. :red-flag: :red-flag:) The only catch is this: You have to agree to include a link. This then helps increase the (usually low quality) link’s presence in search results.

“Guest post” asks for Triangle Blog Blog

How do we know this is a scam? Because the same scammer contacted us.

On November 5, Triangle Blog Blog received an email from “Nina Sumner” asking to contribute to our website. The email address goes to a server outside of the United States.

This is called the kicker

We sent the email to our spam folder.

Update 11/22: The Local Reporter sent out a newsletter late on 11/21, stating the following: “We are pleased to announce that The Local Reporter will vote for new TLR board members tomorrow as part of our ongoing process to renew and refresh our publication. More details will follow after tomorrow’s vote becomes official.”

Several paragraphs down, they continued to tout Sumner’s latest piece.

Mel is a journalist and librarian. Outside of work, she volunteers as a reading tutor at Carrboro Elementary School, writes about journalism for a variety of publications, and serves as chair of the OWASA...