Inquirer writer accused of plagiarism

"The tape recorder killed sportswriting."

- Gay Talese

 

At a prep football game I covered today I stood a few feet away as a weekly guy interviewed a group of five seniors at once with no tape recorder and his hands on his hips. I bet somehow all of those boys get quoted "perfectly." It's not quite fabricating a quote, but there's no way he gets accurate quotes that way.
And don't even get me started on him fist-bumping the players after the game.

 

He doesn't belong on the sidelines. He belongs in the stands.

 

you are full of it.

not even close to the most serious transgression.

try conflict of interest - having a personal stake - financial or otherwise - in a story.

off the charts way way worse.

wake up and grow up.

a guy made one mistake in an otherwise honorable career.

get off your high horse.

i can't wait to hear your self-righteous and unforgiving position - yet again.

 

The bend-over-backwards two-step address to such a situation:

Take a representative sample of his stuff, from the past few years,and run it through the filter to see if it matches far too closely something which appeared previously under someone else's name . . .

If that test is passed, simply say: If you do it again, and we see it, you're gone. And no appeals.
Just. Get. Out.

That's as merciful as one should get. And as merciful as anyone should have any right to expect.

 

Very rarely am I at a loss for words on this site...

In defense of plagiarism? Wow...

There are a lot of "high horses" in this business. Those can be endless debates.

If you're a journalist and you take something someone else wrote and knowingly passed it off as your own, it's the unforgivable sin.

I know a lot of people who claim to have done it "accidentally" which usually involves something they copy over, intending to change and then don't. I can't defend that either, although maybe those guys deserve a suspension rather than being fired...

 

I agree with Mizzougrad on this, although I think what henryhenry may be referring to is the shades of gray that may come up.

There don't seem to be any in this particular case, because it's the passing information off as his own that seems more pertinent and blatant than the actually copying, but...

In a world in which there are so many places to get information, and can be degrees of extent and intention of the offense, and because, in some cases, there are only so many ways information can be regurgitated, anyway, in what are supposed to be typically short blog posts written by packs of journalists, I can see how the matter of degrees should, perhaps, be taken into consideration.

To take this discussion in another direction, though: I wonder if readers really care very much whether there is copying and/or plagiarism going on on stories?

If information is correct, does it matter to them where we get it anymore? I ask this just because the media landscape has changed so much, so fast, and not, in my opinion, for the better in recent years.

 

I have been plagiarized before, badly, by someone who took the work he stole from me, won an APSE Award and got a better job while I was stuck in a dead-end job I believed I'd never get out of. Anyone who thinks this is anything other than a capital offense has no idea what the f*** they're talking about.

My story has a happy ending. Later, I did get out of that dead-end job ... and I got it by beating out the prick who stole my story. Karma is either a bitch or a benefactor, depending on how you look at it.

-- Mike Vaccaro

 

There is a shade of gray on some instances, but this does not appear to be one of those cases. This one looks pretty straightforward.

 

I don't defend plagiarism. I understand plagiarism.

Last time the Eagles went to the Super Bowl, we were doing a daily poster which included a mini-bio on the player. I had McNabb's poster to work on, and went to the Eagles' media guide. I saw what they had on the top of his bio page, and it was perfect for what I had in mind. So I started putting the thing together.

Then, fortunately, it struck me when I looked at the proof -- I had used what was in the Eagles' media guide word for word. I'm thankful to this day that I caught it, and that I was able to remedy it.

Here's my point. My transgression was not one of journalistic espionage. It was not a transgression of malice. It was simply a human error. The concept of plagiarism was nowhere near my line of thinking as I worked on that page.

(By the way, if there's any thought that taking it from a media guide is any different than taking it from another journalist, that's not the point here. That's another argument.)

Sorry ... I hope Kevin Tatum doesn't take the ultimate hit for his transgression.

 

When a horse gets high, usually is it by weed, or something stronger? And I would think it's much harder to stay on a high horse than any other kind, unless it's mellow and past the munchies phase.

 

Weed doesn't get a horse high. Mr. Ed told me so.