You thought it was bad when reporters plagiarized?

Have you ever seen them together? Huston and Dumbledore? Just sayin.

 

It'll chew you up.

 

I think he did retire, in like 1980.

He's emeritus and has been for a while.

Here's a question: On editorial pages you see a lot of this, sometimes quotes on various topics are not attributed to the news source (sometimes they are). is that different than when a mug shot is next to a column?

 

Ok, but I still think you gotta cut an 83 year old guy some slack

 

Don't think this has been posted. Here is Merrill's response, with a few comments at the bottom supporting him.

http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2007/11/14/columnist-apologizes-carelessness/

some interesting tidbits...

For those making fun of his photo, this is what he uses with his column. I assume it's a little older than his current one:
http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2007/11/03/new-department-shows-splintering-education/

 

Some voices of defense and dissent. Interesting.

http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=12965

http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=12964

http://jscranton.wordpress.com/2007/11/15/if-merrill-is-guilty-of-plagiarism-is-ted-rall-as-well/

http://poynter.org/forum/?id=letters

 

And the excuse mongers are out in full force.

You bet your behind if this was a 21-year-old kid accused of this, instead of an "icon," no one, no one, would be supporting him.

 

I'm generally an absolutist when it comes to "plagiarism." But for the purposes of this discussion, which I find really interesting, is this even "plagiarism"?

And how do we weigh a spotless (let's assume for the purposes of argument that it's spotless, since there's been no assertion to the contrary) sixty-year career against an accusation that he simply didn't attribute two boilerplate quotes?

 

I don't think the issue is not attributing the quotes. To me, there's only one side you can come down on that, it's wrong.

But to me, the issue is the crying we are getting from Merrill's supporters. You know if someone in their newsrooms had done the same thing, they'd be crying for an absolutist-style ending. That's all.

 

Good to know he doesn't think too highly of himself:

Hard to imagine why the public would ever lose faith in newspapers when we've got "legends" like this. And folks running out of the woodwork to defend him.

 

Q: Is it plagiarism?
A: Yes. How could it not be? He published quotes that he had no part in gathering. At what point did that become anything other than plagairism? I must have missed the memo.

As to the sixty-year career, that only makes it worse. If it's a kid in school, or a recent graduate, I could understand. Not let it go, mind you, but understand. If it was a guy fighting for his livelihood with every column, I could understand. But this? This is just lazy. And holier-than-thou. And don't you know who I am? And I'm better than you, so I'm right.

"How dare you hold me responsible?"

 

It's this kind of reasoning that kept an SE at a somewhat nearby paper from apologizing to me after he ripped off quotes from a story of mine a few years back. I still run into him every now and again, and it's generally the first thing that goes through my head. Some people simply think quotes are fair game.

That, I just don't understand.

Oh, and unless something's changed, the Maneater comes out Tuesday and Friday (although it updates its Web site daily); the Missourian comes out Sunday through Friday.