Can You Plagiarise Yourself?

While I fully believe you can plagiarize yourself, I think it points to a bigger problem: A view of laziness.
Absolutely nothing wrong with re-using information you've already gathered, but part of our profession is to keep stuff newsworthy and timely. There's almost always something that can be touched up to make sure it's the most accurate you can make it.

 

On some papers there is a written policy against lifting any staff copy out of the archives, although to me this seems a bit extreme and arbitrary. You find out an hour before deadline that a famous local person dies, which is worse -- a story filled with background that's already been in the paper or waiting another day to tell people the guy croaked? In the case of a column in which deadline is not an issue, find fresh info and fresh way of telling it.

 

At worst, it's a venial sin.

 

So, if Mitch Albom took three paragraphs -- (he really liked a phrase he turned) -- from his last year's March Madness Preview column and threw them into this season's installment, that would be a minor offense?

 

The offense is not made more major just because the person who does it is generally disliked on this board, wouldn't you say?

 

That sentence hurt my head.

 

Then don't plagiarize it, you bastard.

 

Only if he intended to use it, then didn't actually show up to work to use it.

 

No...the coach is giving us the same three quotes after every game. He's plagiarizing himself.