Plagiarism in Greensboro

http://www.news-record.com/blog/56184/entry/71945

This really bums me out. Robert is someone I looked up to when I passed through that newsroom, and I'm having a really hard time understanding how this happened. I feel like the public explanation the paper is giving is inadequate.

 

Re: Plagarism in Greensboro?

Too bad about Robert. I liked him in the brief period we worked together.

 

Re: Plagiarism in Greensboro?

I guess because I don't quite believe it. I'd like to see a side-by-side on what they're calling plagiarism. Fixed the typo in the hed, though. If folks think I should take the ? out, I will.

 

whose stuff did he lift?

 

wow. pretty stunning.

From what I knew of Robert, he was as hard a worker as there was.

This also further depletes the N&R Sports staff, which was already pretty much bare-bones.

 

Good lord, you're not kidding. If their staff directory is right, they were down to six sports staffers WITH Bell. I can't even comprehend how we got to a point where a paper that size has a staff that small.

 

I'm not going to defend plagiarists (though I have wondered elsewhere on this board if it should always be a death-penalty offense for a journalist's career).

I just wish that explanations about such instances were more clear and precise.

It is quite possible for a lazy writer to steal another person's work and for that content to be fair, accurate and true. Meanwhile it also is quite possible for a lazy writer to fabricate an incident, an event or a person entirely, which isn't exactly plagiarism but doesn't get anywhere close to accuracy or truth. And, to me, that is a way worse offense because fiction has no business being passed off as fact, while most readers don't give a crap who actually wrote most of the stories they read.

Seems to me this explanation to the readers should have focused on "misrepresenting another's work as his own," thereby breaking the trust relationship that a reporter needs with both editors and readers.

Most of the time, though, I'd bet that what plagiarists swipe from other sources is fair, accurate and true. Only the byline part is a lie.

 

and this makes it less wrong?

 

Different wrong, at least.

But in the sense of misleading readers, yeah, maybe less wrong than the other. Not saying it's an innocent mistake or a minor transgression, but making up stuff -- as certain noted successful writers in this business have done and continued to work -- strikes me as much worse.

 

"Different" wrong?

Wrong is wrong. Just as dead is dead, even if you didn't mean to run him over.