Breach of copyright--who's responsible

I made a little site for a young friend.
I've been nagging for text, as it's largely pictures.
Today she gave me a long printed article.
I noticed a little copyright symbol at the bottom of the last page, and found that it was the work of a journalist and had already been published on a website.
The friend had been interviewed by the journalist, but the work is well crafted; not just quotes.
Had I not noticed, and quoted the text on her site, would I have been in trouble if the writer or original web site had seen it?
The site is tiny and about a community project, but I don't think that would make it OK.
Is it up to a person who makes a site for another person to watch out for things like this?
http://images.devshed.com/fda/icons/icon5.gif
Question

Wow, great discussion topic. I'm not sure you'll get concret answers out of us (copyright lawyers might be better to ask), but I'm certainly open to the discussion.

My personal opinion is based on fair-use... as the article is about your friend, you morally should be allowed to post it (with proper credit given). However, life doesn't run on fair-use.

I'm pretty sure if you're able to contact the original author, they'll give you permission to post. The question lies in who owns the text. Yes the author wrote it, but the author wrote it on behalf of another publication... and/or sold the work to the publication. Sometimes the author keeps ownership rights of the text, and sometimes they are required to forfeit those rights to the publication. You might be able to tell based on who's name is next to the copyright.

I read an interesting story where the Major League Baseball threatened a paper for printing sports scores. Who owns sports scores? Sports scores are simply facts of an event that past.

It doesn't matter how big the site it, and it doesn't matter if the article is about your friend or not, or if you give proper credit. It's their article, and you cannot legally post it without their permission. Of course, they may be happy to give you permission, though it's more likely they'll ask you to just link to their version instead.

Thank you both. In this case I wouldn't feel comfortable to reproduce, even if I were given permission. The writer is given credit, but the copyright notice is to the publisher--a sort of semi-government website--so I think the story has been sold outright.
My main concern is that I may not always notice if people give me copied text. I think that, while most people understand that you shouldn't copy stuff from books, lots seem to think that the web is open slather and you can copy and reproduce anything that takes your fancy. To my understanding, everything is copyright unless the owner specifically says "go for it".
Sometimes if I think stuff isn't original I Google for a sentence or two, but I don't know that that would work in the case of a pdf, which this piece was.