A former reporter for the University of Hawai'i-Manoa student newspaper yesterday denied fabricating sources or quotes, following a statement published by the paper that it could not verify the existence of 29 people quoted in 14 of his stories.

Kris DeRego, in a written statement, said his stories were "adulterated during the copy (editing) process — a problem encountered by other staff members working at Ka Leo."

The newspaper, Ka Leo O Hawai'i, published a correction Wednesday stating that a review of all stories from January 2008 to May 2009 found it was unable to verify the existence of 29 people who were quoted in 14 stories.

An online search of the stories listed in the correction showed all the stories were written by DeRego, a UH student, former reporter and editor for Ka Leo.

Ka Leo adviser Jay Hartwell, responding to DeRego's charge that copy editors changed quotes, yesterday said no other reporters have complained about names being "mangled" in the editing process.

"There were chancellors, faculty and others quoted in those stories and none of their names were messed up," Hartwell said. "It doesn't seem credible that the copy desk could mess up that many names in that many stories."

In a published correction, the newspaper said it was unable to find university records for 21 of the people quoted in stories by DeRego. For eight other names, the newspaper found there were students with the same or similar names, but who were not enrolled as students at the time they were quoted.

"While I've certainly made mistakes as a reporter, I never intentionally misattributed quotes or attempted to mislead the paper's readership," DeRego said. "To the contrary, I worked diligently on each of my stories, putting in extra time and effort to ensure that my work reflected the highest standards of professionalism and elevated the overall quality of the publication."

Ka Leo Editor Mark Brislin, who took the helm of the paper this month, said the decision to run the correction was made to protect the paper's integrity. In the future, the paper has decided to have reporters provide e-mail addresses and phone numbers of sources who appear in stories, Brislin said.

DeRego was at Ka Leo for about two years, but no longer works there. In 2006, he ran unsuccessfully for the Windward O'ahu seat on the state Board of Education. He is a UH student majoring in political science, speech and philosophy, according to his Web site.

Hartwell said he became suspicious when a quotation attributed to a student made reference to the full name of a former UH president. Hartwell said he felt it unlikely that the student would remember that name. Hartwell said he searched all the stories printed in the paper from January 2008 to May 2009 to determine if the students quoted had UH e-mail addresses as a way of verifying they were students at the school.

When Hartwell asked DeRego to submit the names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of the sources, he said DeRego submitted five. Only one responded by e-mail and refused to include a phone number for verification, Hartwell said.

"We have a lot of good people working here and I trust everyone who's working here," Brislin said. "I think we're hoping to strengthen our reputation because we were open about this with our readers."