Should I feel any guilt whatsoever?

Not at all, Red. Enjoy your job even more now.

 

You did the right thing, Red, and a little bit of guilt just shows that you have a good heart, too. Don't let it bug you too much, though. The guy made his own bed, not you.

 

"He e-mails me, thanking me for getting him fired, asking who is hurt more - me having a few words ripped off, or him losing the job"

Who is hurt more? Try the profession.

 

yeah, this kind of shit pisses me off. dude thinks he should keep his job, despite not doing his own work. yet there are thousands of journalists being laid off, who have never stolen someone's copy. fuck that guy.

 

Had this happen to me last winter.

Writer at a weekly that we print/own/whatever decided to copy a wrestling preview I wrote and put her/his byline on it.

The only thing they changed was the lede.

 

Did he talk to you man-to-man before he stole your copy? No? Sucks to be him, then.

 

As someone who is currently out of a full-time gig, I couldn't agree more. This may just be the best post ever on this board.

 

As stated earlier you feel guilty because you're a good dude that doesn't want to hurt anyone, but the guy isn't worthy of your guilt.
He'll either learn his lesson and never do it again or stay out of the business. In either case, we're all winners.
Go in peace.

 

You can feel a little compassion -- in this guy's eyes, there must have been some extenuating circumstances beyond sheer laziness that caused his monumental lapse in judgment -- but he's the one who should feel guilt.

We've had other threads here on plagiarism. I think automatic termination is a disproportionate penalty, in an industry that ignores all sorts of equal or greater ethical transgressions, and it even smacks of showboating by people who get to flex for a day the way big bosses rarely get to flex anymore. A 30-day suspension, maybe a public flogging, might be more fair than the loss of livelihood; there are physicians, after all, who are permitted to continue doctoring after committing malpractice. They just pay more in premiums. Reporters who are found to have active, undeniable conflicts of interest -- accepting favors from someone they cover, for instance, which puts tainted and biased coverage into the paper, not just stuff that ran elsewhere -- typically are just moved off that beat or even "demoted" within newsroom ranks, but they're allowed to keep working. Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin, to cite just two examples, continued to sell the books for which they were charged with pilfering others' work.

Instantaneous firing also might be a handy tool nowadays for beancounters wanting to thin the herd -- no one in any workplace (least of all newspapers) should give the bosses any cause to yank his/her job, not in this economy.

But ... everyone knows the prevailing rule, so it is what it is. If the ethos of the newsroom said that everyone who takes off their shoes and socks and picks their toes at their work space gets automatically terminated, we'd all know not to do that. We all know the penalty for plagiarism going in.

Call in sick. Write the worst, suckingest story in your life. Tell your editor you got blown off by the sources or your car broke down. Do anything except swipe someone else's published copy. That's the capital offense of the newspaper world. This guy had to know that the day before he plagiarized, he knew it even as he was plagiarizing and he knew it the day he got caught.

So maybe plagiarists get fired for being too stupid to deserve a job in a newsroom. Hmm, if I look at it that way...

 

You should hire the guy; clearly, he knows good copy when he sees it!

 

Red,

You were ripped off. Too bad for the thief.