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A problem in Detroit?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Moderator1, Dec 26, 2015.

  1. Moderator1

    Moderator1 Moderator Staff Member

  2. WriteThinking

    WriteThinking Well-Known Member

    I think newspapers, or, more specifically, newspaper reporters, still tend not to treat blogs/bloggers as they would another newspaper/newspaper reporter.

    Hence, the lifting of the information in the paragraph regarding McCoy's life-changing car accident, and that's what happened here.

    I have mixed feelings about it. Other than that one paragraph, Sharp's story seems original and fine. The details regarding the accident certainly should have been attributed, or, better yet, gotten, again, by Sharp himself. But if they had been, I wonder if they would have looked/read any differently than they did in his plagiarized version.

    The paragraph in question was a recitation of the facts of the accident. Without attribution -- in other words, written just as facts that Sharp had gotten directly (if he had done that), how would we know if plagiarism was committed anyway, unless those original facts were somehow wrong, or had changed in the meantime?

    Given the type of story it was, the fact that the facts of the story were already out there, and the fact that the reporter of the original story was OK with how the Free-Press handled the issue, I think I'd be OK with it, too.
     
  3. WriteThinking

    WriteThinking Well-Known Member

    The funny/bad thing is, Sharp's story could have gone almost entirely without that paragraph at all, and it probably would have been fine.
     
  4. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Dead-bang plagiarism.

    And no, the original author doesn't get to decide it's OK.
     
  5. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    One thing is, you can tell Drew Sharp sure as hell didn't come up with the story idea himself, because it isn't a piss-splattering click-trolling rip job on anybody and everybody involved.

    It must have been one of the monthly or bimonthly "write something nice about somebody" orders Sharp gets from the Freep brass so they can roll out some clips to respond to accusations, "Sharp never does anything but fucking piss and moan about everything and everybody in any goddamn story he writes."
     
  6. Fredrick

    Fredrick Well-Known Member

    Got to agree with this 100 percent. Pretty powerful comments by the subject of the article where she says she never talked to the FREEP and felt sorry for the original author. Powerful.
     
  7. Jake_Taylor

    Jake_Taylor Well-Known Member

    Yeah, if all someone ever does is bitch and moan about how terrible everything is it might be amusing at times, but would eventually get tedious. Maybe it's a Michigan thing?
     
    LongTimeListener and dixiehack like this.
  8. wheels89

    wheels89 Active Member

    I could swear that Gannett had a zero tolerance plagiarism policy because a long time ago Barry Stanton at The Journal News got fired for plagiarism that was 20 times not as egregious or dead to rights as this.
    However maybe that also went by the waste side in their reinventing of the newsrooms.
     
  9. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member


    That might have been a newsroom thing. Not a Local Information Center thing or a Newsroom of the Future thing.
     
    Doc Holliday likes this.
  10. bevo

    bevo Member

    And let's not forget, Mitch Albom still technically has a job there, although he's more into promoting his books nowadays. And he just made stuff up.
     
  11. franticscribe

    franticscribe Well-Known Member

    Making stuff up is worse than plagiarizing.
     
    Ace likes this.
  12. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

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