[ OT ] Someone stole my story

I had a similar thing happen many years ago. Back in the early 90's I wrote for a regional music magazine. One afternoon my editor came in and asked me if I ever published under a different name. I told her no. She then showed me a story that was in our city's weekly newspaper ( a direct competitor when it came to music news ). It was the exact same story our magazine had run about a month ago. 
 
 We did some digging and found out that a freelancer had pitched a story to them, they accepted it, and then he submitted my story which he copied word for word. He had n't thought it through clearly, our magazine was popular and had a lot of readers so we got a lot of calls about it as soon as their paper was out. Honestly, I'm shocked that their editing staff did n't catch it. 
 
 There were threats of lawsuits from our magazine against the guy and the paper and some seriously heated discussions between the two companies. Eventually the other paper printed a full page ad that was a retraction and apology. They also printed that guy's name in the full page ad and included it in all press releases regarding that situation. As far as I know that guy never sold anything in that town again. 
 
 I worked out for me. The newspaper sent me a gift basket with fruit and snacks and I got a lot of fan mail telling me I rocked and that guy sucked. 

