Romenesko and Poynter

Watch their traffic drool to a crawl, without him.

 

Bizarre. Like a lot of others, this is the only thing I go to Poynter for nowadays. One less thing to click, I suppose.

I found the "questions" at the bottom of the article rather sigh-inducing in general, this one in particular.

Huh? I always read a "says" like that as a paraphrased quote, when it's either awkward or not feasible to quote a source verbatim. If you stick a "said" in front of it, it's some sort of quote. Isn't using quotation marks when you're not quoting word-for-word even more inappropriate?

 

What Romenesko does is in the opposite direction of what makes plagiarism what it is. He's sharing other people's work, drawing attention to their stories, and in doing so he occasionally doesn't summarize as independently as we've decided he should. No writers have complained about his treatment of their work. That he would offer his resignation two months before his scheduled departure tells me he, too, has had enough of it already.

 

The bit that really got me was:

Because he's been rogue-posting under the noses of the diligent Poynter editors who only just now noticed this was how he attributed things? This is the most widely-read thing on their site. This seems so chicken-shit. Plainly the editors there knew how he wrote and didn't have a problem with it until someone at CJR brought it up.

 

Did he offer to resign as in fall on his sword, or did he offer to resign as in "fuck this shit if that's what you're trying to do to me." I know a lot of people, including myself, who have offered such resignations.

 

No organization that is in bed with ESPN can pass judgment on anyone.

 

Resignation accepted.

 

Hey, Poynter is just being consistent with its practice...

...of treating readers like they're incapable of judgment.

 

To say he was plagiarizing would be to take the entire theme of his work out of context.

 

Yep, sounds like he very politely told his editor to fuck off. Good for him.

She'll be beloved for ruining what had become a staple of just about everyone in journalism over the last decade. Not that she'll even notice, with the bubble those dumbasses have constructed to shield themselves from the real world.

 

This is insane.