Extraordinary to relate, but The Times, which within living memory was proud to be regarded as the "newspaper of record" in sporting terms, is at present operating without a golf correspondent, a chief sports writer or a tennis correspondent.

After the departure of Peter Dixon - who could hardly have thought himself to be as irreplaceable as he has proved to be - and the plain daft exit of Simon Barnes, the third leg of sports editor Tim Hallissey's unwanted staffing hat-trick has come with the axing of the controversial Neil Harman.

The circumstances which led to Harman's sacking, for that is what it is, were outlined fully here.

Confidentiality clauses used to suppress information often frustrate journalists' working lives, so it is doubly galling when such contractual niceties are used to keep things schtum on a development within the profession. Even this week, News UK corporate types were informing media correspondents that nothing had been decided in respect of Harman's fate. 

Yet one suspiciously well-informed American website - possibly helped by some of Harman's erstwhile colleagues in the tennis press boxes around the world - was reporting the dismissal of the paper's tennis correspondent at the end of September. 

And this week, Private Eye confirmed the news. Our own enquiries suggest that the Eye report is well-founded.

Harman was suspended by The Times in July, pending an internal enquiry into whether he had committed acts of plagiarism while doing the "day job" for the paper. 

The former Mail football reporter had undertaken massive amounts of freelance work and book-writing as lucrative sidelines, including an Andy Murray biography published immediately after the Scot's Wimbledon victory last year. Harman admitted his over-enthusiastic use of cut-and-paste in the 2013 Wimbledon yearbook, but according to the Eye, it was shown to be a technique he had practised for at least six years; it even claims that he reproduced entire 600-word articles.

The internal inquiry by Bob Tyrer, of the Sunday Times, found no evidence of such plagiarism in Harman's work for his newspaper, but sources at the Little Shard suggest that the dismissal was achieved by utilising one of those catch-all contractual clauses which talk grandly of bringing the paper into disrepute.

It is questionable whether Harman could have continued to do his job for the paper, as the All England Club was considering withholding the reporter's Wimbledon accreditation. This is one of the more distasteful elements of the affair, since the sports editor of another national newspaper - an inhabitant of a glasshouse who has a plentiful supplies of cobbles to throw around - was apparently energetically lobbying Wimbledon to pull the plug on Harman's media access.  

Nor are the blazeratti innocent of flagrant hypocrisy here: Wimbledon happily continued selling the yearbook throughout the championships fortnight, despite being made aware of the plagiarism issues in April this year.   

Harman is believed to be considering a legal challenge to his dismissal from The Times. In his late 50s, another senior journalism job seems unlikely to come his way. Work for the "dark side" in PR might be possible. It has also been suggested that Harman has received an offer to write a book about the episode. 

And that's one book that will have to be all his own work.

Beware. Some part of what follows may have been cut and pasted from another publication or website.

The idea of journalism being the profession that ate itself was underlined over the course of the last few days with the outing of Neil Harman, pictured left, as a plagiarist over a book he edited for the All-England Club last year.

Harman, the long-time tennis correspondent of The Times, has admitted he is guilty as charged, and today was suspended by the Thunderer. 

The allegations originated in the United States, and carried more than a tinge of professional spite. And a hint of holier-than-thou hypocrisy. Harman even found that his personal Facebook page was hacked, so that someone could alter his employment status to "former" correspondent. Classy.

Harman, previously an enthusiastic tweeter, has quit both Facebook and Twitter following the storm that has blown up around him.

The nub is that he copied chunks of other people's work - from American dailies, The Guardian and Sports Illustrated - and used it in the 2013 edition of the Wimbledon Yearbook. 

In all, around 30 instances of over-enthusiastic use of cut-and-paste, without proper attribution, was discovered by the dogged investigative sleuths of Slate. Someone, somewhere has spent a considerable amount of time and effort trawling through editions of the Wimbledon Yearbook and cross-checking with other publications' reports from SW19.

You can read the whole of the Slate piece here.

Roy Greenslade's Media Guardian news report provides a more succinct version of events.

Now, no one is going to condone what Harman did. But there has been more than a touch of a witch-hunt going on here - the Times man, until he resigned the post, was the co-president of the International Tennis Writers' Association, but it would be fair to say he has never been universally popular with his press box colleagues at home or abroad.

As one of the tennis journalists who saw their work appear without permission or provenance in the Wimbledon Yearbook told me today, "To be honest, I'm not that bothered about it. For one, I'm not that precious. 

"But it's not as if he was using my writing to in some way make him look like a better writer. The book was an end-of-season rush-job, and he was also working on an Andy Murray book at the same time.

"Elsewhere in the book, he's included proper attributions to the people whose copy he's used. But he's failed to do that properly all the way through. What he's done has been lazy and sloppy, but not much worse than that."

Yesterday, Harman sent this letter of resignation from the ITWA: “It has been brought to my attention that I have severely compromised my position as a member, having used unattributed material to form part of my writing of the Wimbledon Yearbook. There can be no excuse for such shoddy work, which I deeply regret. I did it without malice aforethought, but that I did it at all is simply inexcusable.

“I sincerely had no idea the extent to which I had let the Club, myself and my colleagues down and feel it is only right that I relinquish my membership. This is a marked stain on my reputation and (I hope) good name."

The email was circulated to the ITWA membership privately. Someone then published it. "That was just not right," our tennis writer said. 

It seems unlikely now that the cherished invitation to become a member of the All-England Club will ever be forthcoming for Harman. More seriously, he could lose his Times job, even though there's not been any suggestion that he has committed any heinous plagiarism while doing his day-job as a reporter for the paper. 

It seems that the digital lynch mob, with their virtual pitchforks and torches, is intent on demanding his head, as they pursue a standard of ethics and conduct which has been sadly lacking in the manner Harman has been treated.