I've been plagiarized. Now what?

Go after the plagarist and all, but did you have to mention that it was a woman? Really, was that necessary?

 

[blue] Turn yourself into the police for petty theft![/blue]

 

There is nothing -- nothing -- worse than being plagiarized, and there's really no good way to go about handling it. But sometimes, you get a happy ending to the saga. Here's my story, and I apologize in advance for its length:

About 15 years ago, working at a tiny paper in Arkansas, I wrote a column about the Hogs' 40 Minutes of Hell. To make the point of how it wears teams down, I wrote the column as one long, 800-word, one-sentence paragraph, interspersed with Time Outs. Shakespeare? Hell no, but it was as clever as I could be when I was 25 and stupid.

Anyway, this was the jurassic pre-Internet era, before everyone's stuff at every podunk paper was accessible to everyone else. Me and some sportswriter buddies used to just use snail mail to exchange our stuff, get input, offer advice, whatever. Inevitably, these stories would get passed around to other people, part of the chain, all in the name of wanting to see other people's work, styles, ideas, etc.

OK. Fast forward a couple years. I'm working in upstate New York now, I see on the wire where a guy (I won't use his real name; call him Santos Pierre) who used to work with one of my sportswriter friends has won a couple of APSE awards. I knew him slightly, and was moved to call him and say congrats. I should have suspected something when he answered the phone, and very sheepishly said thanks, and then, "You know what's funny? One of the columns I entered was inspired by something you wrote once." Instead, I was flattered. My career was languishing at the time, but if something I did could inspire something good in someone else, hey, that was something.

A few weeks later, the old APSE convention newspaper arrives, the one that had all the winnners' stories published in it, like they do on-line now. I flip it open, go looking for Santos' columns ... and nearly threw up on my desk. He'd taken my Arkansas column, changed names and circumstances to fit the Pitino Kentucky team, and stolen everything else. I mean everything -- it was a word-for-word filch job. I honestly couldn't speak for three hours. When I did, I called my one friend, the one who used to work with Santos, and he was irate, told me Santos had been suspected of this stuff before (someone said he was often spotted with an old copy of The National open on his desk, and would lift whole paragraphs from Richmond or Pierce). He and others said I should call the APSE chairman, that I should out the guy, make a fuss, but here's what I did: nothing. I was a shlub at the Middletown Record. Santos was now an APSE-winning columnist. Who are they gonna believe?

OK. Hit the fast-forward button again. A little while later, I'm trying to get my stuff read for a take-out/columnist gig at the KC Star. I can't even get a whiff, even though I have a close friend working there, trying to get the sports editor to give me a look. That alone would make it just another frustrating failed attempt to jump-start my career before I just say screw it and go into teaching. Only there's a bonus indignity attached: the sports editor is smitten, absolutely smitten, with one person for the job: Santos Pierre.

Now, my friend is one of the ones who's been hammering me that I should have busted this thief when I had the chance, and he's begging me to let him tell the sports editor, but I'm still uncomfortable with this. But then comes a day when he's with the SE alone, and they're talking about the job, and he brings up my name and the SE is thoroughly unimpressed, and the SE starts talking lovingly about Santos, and he says: "Your boy (meaning me) isn't in the same league as Santos. Look at this column. Your boy couldn't do this in a million years." Naturally, it was the stolen column. Finally, my friend just explodes, tells the SE the whole story, says if not for me and every other previously published writer Santos wouldn't ever have anything to write. When he's done, the SE doesn't believe him. But he makes my friend a deal: have me send him my version of the column, and if it's true, he'll read my stuff closer.

Now, the complication in this is that I'd been fired from that paper in Arkansas and didn't have easy access to my old columns, but I did get a friendly set of hands to send me that column, I faxed it to Kansas City and ... well, I've had a pretty good run the last decade (I started at the Star 10 years ago this month) and Santos ... well, he's still working, and let's hope the Intertet has scared him straight. Anyway, that's my story.

Mike Vaccaro

 

Good story.

I do love happy endings.

 

Man, i would just be honored to write an article worth stealing.

Seriously, though, take this to your superiors, find a way to nail this guy (or girl, apparently) to the wall. Plagiarism is a complete ethical disaster, and erodes the credibility of the media with the public.

 

Wait til Mike Vaccaro finds out some chump named Johnny Chan just stole his story.

Our next summer novel will need a character named Santos Pierre.

 

lol