Meet Sharon Waxman

Sharon Waxman is a former New York Times reporter who now runs a website called The Wrap which specializes in covering the business side of Hollywood.

She writes a column for her site called WaxWord.

She apparently spends the rest of her time complaining about her competitors.

She's also one half of a long-running Hollywood cage match with media heavy-hitter Nikki Finke, who has renamed Waxman's site, The Crap.

Last April Waxman used up a good chunk of her 15 minutes when she accused Michael Wolff of the website Newser.com, of stealing content from her website. "Just give us proper credit and linkage, or don't use our content," Waxman told Wolff.



Wolff fired back with this tidbit: "a quick search shows her site doing even more blatantly and systematically what she accuses us of doing—taking a free-ride on other people’s content. There’s something else I turned up: When Waxman was a reporter at the New York Times, she wrote an over-the-top laudatory article about how Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz was making aggressive investments in the entertainment business. Waxman and the Wrap, in surely the appearance of trading the Times’ positive coverage for personal gain, became one of Schultz’s investments."

This week, Waxman's hypocrisy hit close to home when I became a victim of what she has accused Wolff of doing.

While doing a search on Google, I found one of my copyrighted images on The Wrap.

Waxman had lifted an image I licensed to Miami New Times and used it on her site to illustrate a story about Gerald Posner. She never asked asked my permission or gave me a photo credit.

It was an image I shot earlier this year of Miami Beach author Gerald Posner.

I sent her an email demanding she remove the image which she did. I also invoiced her for use of the image. (Google has cached the page here.)

My image is gone from Waxman's aite but what remains is irony so thick you can cut it with a knife: Sharon Waxman, who some have accused of being ethically challenged, accuses others of stealing from her and then illustrates a story about theft with an image she stole.

Now that's chutzpah!
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Postscript: Waxman's not the only one who believes it's OK to steal stuff. People Magazine recently got caught with their mitts in the cookie jar.