Alert Janeite Lisa sent us this article, which had us scratching our head. It’s a typical “O Hai, Jane Austen Is Teh Hawt Right Now” sort of article, but he mentions the two P&P musicals; then at the end, a list of Friends of Jane that sounded, well, awfully familiar, as most of them had been mentioned at one time or another on AustenBlog.

We were a little put out at first that an article that had so clearly used AustenBlog as a source could not be bothered to mention us, but then on a re-read we realized that the list of F.O.J.s actually had come from Carrie Rickey’s article from earlier this summer, for which we were interviewed, and some information for which came from AustenBlog (which was, of course, mentioned in the article and was the reason we were invited to the screening and interviewed for the piece). Ms. Rickey is not credited, either.

The other curious thing about the article was the person quoted within it, “author and Austen fan Patricia Kennealy-Morrison.”

As Lisa wrote to us, “Who’s Patricia Kennealy-Morrison?”

We wondered, too; her name sounded vaguely familiar, so we thought she must have written a book related to Jane Austen at some point, and doesn’t the article sort of make it seem that way? We wielded our ninja-like Google-fu and discovered that Ms. Kennealy-Morrison’s main claim to fame is that she married Jim Morrison over the anvil. (The marriage ceremony performed at Gretna Green and other Scottish locations for the benefit of British lovers on the run in Jane Austen’s day was basically handfasting.) (And not that one could blame her. Dude. Jim Morrison. We wouldn’t wait for the banns to be cried, either.)

He also quotes world-renowned Austen scholar Andrew Davies (snark).

“These are stories about young men and women at a very crucial time in their lives, when they’re boiling over with hormones,” he said recently.

Emphasis ours; because that “said recently” means, we think, that the author of the piece did not interview Mr. Davies himself, but took the comments from another article. That sort of thing is done all the time. Another curious bit:

Six Austen-related books have also surfaced, including “Mr. Darcy’s Diary” by Amanda Grange, a retelling of “Pride and Prejudice” from Darcy’s viewpoint.

We’re delighted that Amanda Grange’s wonderful book is so prominently mentioned, but only six Austen-related books? Ms. Grange herself has written three! What kind of research is that? So we’re still kind of at a loss about this article. What is it all about? Where did it come from? What possessed David Hinckley to write it? And why did he give Mrs. Mojo Rising so much real estate? Yes, she is an author–of a memoir about her time with Morrison, an Arthurian fantasy series and some upcoming mysteries. Nothing about Jane Austen. Why would she pop up as a person of interest to interview for an article about Jane Austen in current popular culture?

The Editrix’s travail du journée has to do with the Internet, but it is within a marketing department, and we see how articles are pitched to journalists. Sometimes it’s just a phone call to give them a lead; sometimes the pitcher sends lots of information to help the journalist write the article; sometimes the pitcher actually writes the article and lets a journalist put his or her name upon it. We stress that this is all speculation, but think it quite possible that the genesis of this article lies with Ms. Kennealey-Morrison, that she pitched the article, and perhaps that she provided the journalist with the quotes and information contained in the article, some of it not quite correct.

Why would someone do that? Because this is the year of Jane Austen, that’s why. Perhaps she wants a piece of it. Perhaps she has a book about Jane Austen that she is trying to sell, or that will be out soon that we don’t know about; though that’s not the case, according to her MySpace (which we skimmed, thinking, in LiveJournal fashion, tl;dr, though we suppose that might be said about this post as well), in which she includes among her interests “any and all movies made from Jane Austen novels (except the pathetic “updated modern” attempts) but especially the ones starring Emma Thompson and/or Alan Rickman,” so she’s hardly expert on Jane Austen! (And, um, there’s only ONE movie made from a Jane Austen novel starring Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman. Isn’t there?)

Or maybe she’s just friendly with the author of the piece, they had a drink one night and started talking about All This Jane Austen Stuff, and a little Googling and a visit to the clip file later, voila! an editorial!

It’s getting kind of late and we’re a little tired; what say you, Gentle Readers? Cluebat-worthy or just kinda pathetic?