Twitter and self plagiarism

So, when a colleague of mine had his Master thesis published as a book*, was he plagiarizing himself? After all, he did move a few things around and cut out the academia stuff that had nothing to do with the actual book?

*a good book, actually, that I only discovered after I went back to school and it was on the reading list for my class.

 

You're not paying to read the crap I spew here.
I pay to read original content in a newspaper. I did not read original content in that column today.

 

Plagiarism, no. Although some people might find it to be laziness if you put too many of your own tweets together in a column, even if not everyone follows Twitter.

The Reilly example, though, is a pretty extreme one of recycling previous material.

 

It was the first time you paid for that content, so newspaper FTW!

This is about as great an offense to journalism as was calling Aaron Hernandez character-deficient.

Your blog post was premature elocution. No need to defend it.

 

Can you post what the executive editor says in response to your tweet asking "how this isn't plagiarism?"

That should be pretty funny.

 

Me? Overreact? GTFO.
Maybe I'm just sensitive because I spent my career following certain rules and ethics and did a damn good job of it and not I'm unemployed.
Meanwhile, this guy just copies old material and gets paid for it.

 

I can't help you with all that except to say if it has already happened to you, the chance of finding a good career path in journalism is probably very low. No reflection on you, just a reality of the business. Keeping a blog like that and a scorecard of transgressions does not appear to be helping you make that next move while you're young.

But regarding the thread ... not plagiarism.

 

A lot of people are guilty of nothing more than being hacks.

Get used to it.

 

They are his original thoughts. He did sit down at his computer and come up with them.

If he's selling it to more than one publication, that's a problem. If he's just spewing stuff and it eventually ends up in his column, as someone previously noted, that's just like telling someone a joke and later using it in print.

 

So I throw out some witticisms and bon mots on Twitter during a game and then find ways to incorporate them into my column later. BFD. They're mine. My lines, my thoughts, my work. "Plagiarism?" Not even close.

I agree with Mizzougrad that this is an updated version of cracking wise in a press box. The unwritten rule among scribes has been, whatever joke or line someone uses in the press box belongs to him or her. He might choose to use it in print after the game, but it would be horrible form for someone else to use it.

With that in mind, I admit I have Tweeted out a line or even a potential lead sentence on occasion basically to get dibs on it, mark my turf, etc. If I read a writer's Tweet observation in some other writer's story later, that to me veers into plagiarism.

 

After they print, would you publish the same lines again?
Because in my mind, that's the same thing.

 

Stop it. It's not the same thing. It's fucking Twitter. If you tweet out the final score, then include it in the game story, is that unethical? The whole premise for this argument you're trying to make is nonsense.