I nearly choked when I read William Sitwell's Food Spy column for ES magazine (for those who don't live in London this is the Evening Standard's Friday glossy mag).
Sitwell, who is Waitrose Food Illustrated's editor, and also pens Food Spy that imitates (poorly!) a gossip column.
So it wasn't hardly surprising when shock horror I read last Friday's issue only to learn that Gordon Ramsay wants to open a restaurant in Paris...... so where has William been for the last two months???? .. this was covered on CatererSearch in mid December.
William used to brag to Caterer's old news editor that he used to lift its stories for his column, but at least they were normally timely, not leave them for two months!!
So how old does old gossip have to be before it becomes too old to be printed. Clearly very old, as long as you add the smallest detail, "such as the fact that Gordon is trying to find a head chef for Paris, but so far without getting what he wants", its fine to regurgitate it...
I hadn't heard (or rather, noticed) this story until you wrote about it here.
Nothing wrong with warming up old stories. Often, a story's time hasn't yet come the first time round.
Sometimes it hasn't come the second time round either. The danger is that now you've drawn attention to Food Spy's lateness in covering the story, it feels to me like you are plagiarising him!
Nice one Andrew and take your point about warming up old stories... .. not sure that that is a fair cop though.... we would never lift anything and pass it off as our own!