So what will happen to Reader Magazine, “Southern California’s best coupon, calendar & news magazine,” which was recently exposed for repeated, brazen plagiarism? Columbia Journalism Review published a lengthy takedown that lays out a solid case against the publication. Here’s the bottom line:

Yet Reader, the oddly-titled, quarterly coupon magazine of Southern California, is a completely different beast. As evidenced by its tendency to raid journalism’s grave circa 2006, Reader is not on this frantic publishing hamster wheel. Its plagiarism is not isolated to a few sentences or a choice turn of phrase. It’s not the work of a rogue reporter trying to get ahead, or an overwhelmed reporter trying to keep up. It is the whole scale ripping off of others’ work.

Reader is a mailed advertiser—its website boasts it “now has a larger circulation than the paid circulation of nearly every newspaper in California”—that was founded on the principle “keep the price as low as possible, and the quality as high as possible.” Its website is clearly geared towards its advertisers. That’s fitting: the Reader’s advertisers do not sustain its journalism; its “journalism” is a strategy to sustain its advertisers. Plagiarism is its bold, bald business model—and it has been this way since at least 2008.

Besides a smattering of local content, a quick sampling of the last three years’ of issues would suggest all other content is taken from somewhere else.

The CJR report by Erika Fry is jaw dropping. It also includes this interaction with the man behind Reader:

Chris Theodore, founder and publisher of Reader, wasn’t up for explaining. When contacted by CJR, Theodore refused to grant a phone interview or respond to e-mailed questions, and instead sent an e-mail threatening a lawsuit if we pursued the story. He also accused of this reporter of conspiring in a “smear campaign” with an individual “who seeks to speciously discredit our much loved publication, and is using your institution for this purpose.”

Snip:

An initial review of other work by Gogolya has uncovered similar issues, and we are continuing to investigate the extent of problems with his reporting. Anyone with information about this is urged to contact Group Editor Matt DeRienzo at mderienzo@journalregister.com or submit information via the newspaper’s “Fact Check” program.

“I want to apologize personally to our readers for this incident, because if there’s one thing we need to be successful, it’s the trust of our readers. You must have faith that what we report under our name comes from our own work,” said Jim Brady, editor-in-chief of Digital First Media and Journal Register Company, the parent company of The Middletown Press. “Rest assured that, once we were alerted to this issue by Patch on Friday, we moved quicky to resolve it. Plagiarism is one of journalism’s capital crimes, and it has no place at Digital First Media or, obviously, in journalism itself.”

The note goes on to list the specific similarities. It concludes with this:

We’d like to thank editors at Patch for their help in uncovering this problem, and we apologize for any benefit the Middletown Press may have received from the hard work of their writers.

To summarize: the paper acted quickly when learning of the concerns, investigated the previous work of the reporter, issued a call to the public to help uncover any other incidents of theft, named the offending reporter and fired him, detailed the extent of his theft in this story, and apologized publicly and without equivocation.

As long as they work hard to follow up and share the details of any other stolen work, I’d say Middletown Press has so far done a pretty good job handling a troubling situation.

Update Oct. 31, 2011 5:35 pm: Here’s something you rarely see: the editor’s note was tweeted by the paper’s editor, the CEO of the company, and the editor in chief of the company. Actually, I’ve never seen that before. Below are tweets from group editor Matt DeRienzo, CEO John Paton and editor in chief Jim Brady. By sharing this news so openly, they demonstrate their sense of accountability and a desire to make sure the public knows what happened.

Update Nov. 1 2011 7:56 pm: AP picked up the Middletown Press story and, as a result, it issued this correction:

In an Oct. 26 story, The Associated Press, relying on information in the Middletown Press newspaper, reported that a 37-year-old Connecticut man was charged with disorderly conduct for allegedly gutting a deer in a Middletown parking lot near Wesleyan University. The Middletown Press subsequently reported that its story was found to have “significant portions that were identical” to a story published Oct. 25 in the Middletown Patch, an online publication. The Middletown Patch should have been credited for the information.

Please be advised that the Oct 27 Moscow story headlined “Chechen teen diary a bitter tale of bombs and survival” has been withdrawn because, though it included original reporting, it is too similar to a piece already published by The Guardian on the same subject to be appropriate for publication. No substitute story will be issued.

The similarities were first written about by Dylan Byers in Adweek, when he pointed to a tweet from the Guardian writer:

Byers’ piece noted the many similarities in language between the two pieces, and he also pointed out that both writers had interviewed the subject of their respective articles.

So, aside from withdrawing the story, does Reuters plan to explain what action it will take as a result of the copying? And while were talking about Reuters, I keep wondering when will it make it so that its online corrections page points to real corrections, rather than broken links.

Hat tip to Poynter for drawing my attention to this story.

The cartoonosphere is buzzing with talk of a new editorial cartoon published on Monday, Oct. 24, by The Urban Tulsa’s David Simpson. DailyCartoonist.com editor Alan Gardner says it looks a lot like an old editorial cartoon by the late Jeff MacNelly. Gardner not only posted Simpson’s cartoon alongside MacNelly’s, he also overlaid them, with MacNelly’s in red, Simpson’s in blue. “It wasn’t a photocopy; it was actually a redraw. You could tell, from looking at them side-by-side, that he was definitely copying. It is more of a question, to what degree? When you overlay them, the composition is basically the same …

The Poynter post by Bob Andelman cites other cartoonists who agree Simpson stole the cartoon. Also notable is the fact that Simpson lost his job at the Tulsa World in 2005 for plagiarism.

Update Nov. 1, 2011 10:49 pm: Poynter followed up today to note he was busted for yet another incident of plagiarism, and that Simpson has resigned.

I am dismayed to inform Technician readers of a case of plagiarism within the Student Media staff. Yesterday I received an email from a fellow college newspaper saying they suspected one of our staff columnists of plagiarizing a column that ran in their own paper. After investigating the claim, I found it to be true. Whole sections of column were copied word for word from the publication, without giving credit to the original author. This falls under Technician’s definition of plagiarism, as well as the University’s definition. After looking back at all the columns the staff member has written, all 10 of the columns we published by him were plagiarized.
I would like to apologize for publishing plagiarized material in Technician. Even though I did not know about the indiscretions until now, I am fully responsible for all content that runs in this publication. One columnist letting you down means I am letting you down.
Journalistic integrity is of the utmost importance to myself and my staff, and I’m highly disappointed that a member of the Student Media team would breach our trust and readers’ trust. Student Media’s mission statement says the student-run media works to uphold the highest standards of journalistic ethics, and this instance goes directly against our code of ethics.
Just yesterday morning, I read an article regarding a student newspaper getting in trouble for publishing an apology — much like this one — for a case of plagiarism in their own paper. At the time I thought I would never have to deal with such a situation. A few hours later, I was proven wrong. I do not want to offer excuses — they’re worthless. I want to be honest with you and offer my sincerest apologies.
The opinion columns have been taken off our website, the columnist responsible is no longer allowed to contribute to any Student Media publication and the publications the columnist took material from are in the process of being notified.
Looking internally, I will reiterate to the staff how plagiarism affects the relationship the paper has with you, the readers. We are nothing without the truth and we are nothing without our readers.
My apologies,
Laura Wilkinson, Editor-in-Chief

Pretty incredible that all of this student’s contributions were plagiarized. Also notable that they stole from other student papers, which isn’t usually the case. One item of concern is readers have no idea who the offender was, meaning they don’t know which columns were stolen.

In typical Politico fashion, they moved quickly after being alerted to a problem with one of Marr’s stories. The New York Times emailed Wednesday night; Marr had resigned by Thursday and the editor’s note went online that night. Politico treated this with the seriousness it required. Its two top editors, John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei, were frank in saying, “Material published in our pages borrowed from the work of others, without attribution, in ways which we cannot defend and will not tolerate.”

They also made this declaration:

Our standard at POLITICO is to be candid with ourselves and our readers when we err, and to move swiftly, fairly, and transparently to ensure that we maintain public trust.

With the publication of that note, it seems, Politico feels it fulfilled its duty to need to be candid and transparent. Harris and VandeHei have since refused to answer any questions about what happened.

Erik Wemple of the Washington Post tried to get answers:

… Politico higher-ups refuse to discuss the matter. Politico Executive Editor Jim VandeHei declined to comment on whether the site would show its work by publishing a side-by-side comparison of Marr’s original pieces vs. the purloinees. Chief Operating Officer Kim Kingsley writes, “Sorry, but we are not going beyond the letter to readers.”

Actually, it looks like Wemple tried twice:

When asked if he could chat about these events, Jim VandeHei, Politico’s executive editor, e-mailed the Erik Wemple Blogger to announce that the editor’s note “speaks for itself.”
To a point. The note discloses the violations. It asserts Politico’s values. And it includes links to the stories in which a Politico investigation found problems.
What it doesn’t do is facilitate an assessment of what happened.

Julie Moos at Poynter tried:

Politico is not saying whether it has completed its investigation into Marr’s work after finding seven instances of plagiarism, or whether newsroom staff are provided (or will be provided) ethical guidelines to follow in their work. Chief Operating Officer Kim Kingsley said the Allbritton-owned organization will not comment beyond the letter to readers.

As did the Blaze:

When asked what he would tell readers who may have lost at least some faith in the publication’s credibility, Politico’s executive editor Jim VandeHei didn’t respond.

Other journalists probably tried and failed. (It’s worth noting Politico wasn’t so gun shy when Slate accused it of poor corrections practices.)

Imagine this scenario: a city department uncovers major misconduct by an employee and proceeds to issue a press release detailing the issue. Or, to bring it into Politico’s sphere, imagine a federal politician uncovers misconduct by a staffer and issues a press release.

Now imagine the politician refused to answer any additional questions from the press.

“I’m going to let the release speak for itself,” they tell journalists.

Not acceptable. We in the press would push for answers. Politico would push for answers.

This is no different. If we won’t be accountable for our failings and worst moments, then we lose the legitimacy to demand accountability from others.

This basic sense of fairness and transparency is never more important than when “a friend and colleague,” as Harris and VandeHei described Marr, fails or lets themselves and others down. If we aren’t willing to take the heat and answer questions when things are at their worst, how can we demand that of others?

The editor’s note hints that Marr was popular and well liked in the newsroom. (“Marr is a friend and colleague who has produced much outstanding work here and elsewhere.”) I’m speculating, but I get the sense part of the reason for Politico’s silence is they want to protect her. That’s a natural reaction when it comes to a colleague you’ve grown to like and respect, even if they break your rules and bring dishonor upon your organization. It’s okay to to be human and to feel something. It’s okay to admit that, too.

Jack Shafer wrote that these situations call for an editor with “a heart like leather. Not freshly tanned leather—all supple and yielding like a baby’s bum—but like an abandoned baseball glove that’s been roasting in the Sonoran Desert for five or six years. Only those who are hard of heart can properly deal with the plagiarists who violate the journalistic code.”

Yeah, be tough. Tough like an abandoned baseball glove to do the right thing — and then tough enough to answer questions about something that hurts your tanned leather heart.

… Late in the evening of Wednesday, October 12, the writer of a piece about transportation policy published in the New York Times e-mailed one of our senior editors about potential problems with a piece on the same subject that was published in POLITICO. Early Thursday morning, editors here compared the pieces, and did see some similarities in phrasing. These were troubling enough to warrant further examination of reporter Kendra Marr’s work.

This examination produced other examples of stories on transportation issues that bore troubling similarities to work earlier published by others. Some of these examples involved specific turns of phrase or passages that bore close resemblance to work published elsewhere. Others involved similarities in the way stories were organized to present their findings.

None of these examples represented invention of quotes, scenes, or other material. Our inquiry did conclude that there had been an unacceptable violation of our journalistic standards. Material published in our pages borrowed from the work of others, without attribution, in ways which we cannot defend and will not tolerate.

Marr is a friend and colleague who has produced much outstanding work here and elsewhere. She offered her resignation Thursday, and we accepted.

Our standard at POLITICO is to be candid with ourselves and our readers when we err, and to move swiftly, fairly, and transparently to ensure that we maintain public trust. We have added clarifications on all pieces in which we have discovered problems with improper borrowing and inadequate attribution, and will do so on any others that we discover … POLITICO apologizes to our journalistic colleagues and competitors for these errors, and to our readers for the lapse.

John F. Harris
Jim VandeHei

Just as Politico scrupulously avoids using the word plagiarism in the above editor’s note, it also doesn’t use it in the clarifications added to the offending stories. On top of that, it placed the clarifications at the end of the stories — which means they don’t show up unless you click through to the final page.

Politico should place these clarifications at the top of the pieces and call it like it is: plagiarism.

More on Marr here from Poynter.

Thanks, James!

THE IRISH EXAMINER has suspended one of its weekly columnists over serious allegations of plagiarism.
Steven King, the newspaper’s regular international affairs writer, is accused of lifting lengthy passages for his columns from several sources, including British-based blog Spiked, website Salon.com and Commentary Magazine.
The newspaper’s editor Tim Vaughan tweeted this morning that the column has now been suspended.
However, in an unprecedented twist, management has not been able to contact the journalist since the claims against him were made on Wednesday.

Interestingly, the announcement of the column’s suspension was delivered via Twitter:

Storyful has a nice collection of other related tweets and discussion.

An investigation by the FM has revealed that certain sections of the article “Dilemma about horns”, which was part of the magazine’s cover story titled “War on rhinos” in the September 9 edition of the magazine, were copied from a Bloomberg Businessweek article titled “Saving the rhino through sacrifice” written by Brendan Borrell and published on December 9 2010.
Following the investigation, a staff member, who failed to attribute the material from the Bloomberg Businessweek article, has left the employ of the FM.
The material submitted by Richard Slater-Jones, the main author of the rhino articles, is in no way implicated in this matter.
The FM unreservedly apologises to Bloomberg Businessweek and to Mr Borrell. The FM also apologises to its readers for failing to identify that this material was copied from Bloomberg Businessweek.
The FM does not under any circumstances condone or approve of its staff members copying material from other publications or sources without attributing the original material. It is contrary to the publication’s code of conduct and the ethics of the journalism profession.

Journalism.co.za has more background on the theft, reporting that Financial Mail associate editor Sharda Naidoo is the staffer in question. The site got comment from Naidoo:

“Unfortunately, as a result of the legal options that I am considering, I have been advised that it may jeopardise my possible legal claims to respond fully regarding the circumstances that led to my resignation.

“The last few months have been the most distressing of my career. Unfortunately, internal processes at BDFM have been unable to manage and resolve the situation, and I was left with no alternative but to tender my resignation.

“I have always aspired to the highest journalistic standards and believe my work has lived up those standards.

“I am very grateful, however, for the support I have had and continue to enjoy from my former colleagues at the Financial Mail and BDFM, and other members of the media community.”

The Mails’ offending story (or apology) isn’t online as far as I can tell, but here’s the Businessweek story.

… On September 18th, we featured a story titled “Harlem’s New Renaissance”. The article was taken from Jenna McKnight’s article “Harlem’s New Renaissance” featured on Arch Record on August 25th. ArchDaily’s article written by Irina Vinnitskaya took the ideas proposed by Jenna and several of the quotes and information she used, accompanied by a link back to Architectural Record and photography credits, but failed to properly credit the person who came up with the original story idea, Jenna McKnight. Our mistake, a big one.

When Jenna noticed this (as Arch Record constantly reviews our content to syndicate it on their website and on their daily newsletter) she was very upset and contacted me immediately, but given my low email access due to travelling I saw the note a few hours later rather than instantaneously. Immediately upon receiving the email and noticing the improper crediting, I took down the article redirecting it back to Arch Record. In the meanwhile, Jenna posted a story on Arch Record stating that we plagiarized her story with all the given facts.

I reached out to Jenna, told her that there had been no bad intentions and gave her my apologizes as ArchDaily’s editor in chief and assumed my responsibility. Jenna replied, and she was ok with my apologies …

Stinky Journalism has more:

Arch Daily’s executive editor David Basulto responded and told StinkyJournalism via e-mail that the site did publish a report that was “based on” an article by Architecture Record’s Jenna McKnight. Basulto stated that the article wasn’t “a copy/paste, but the ideas and quotes were taken from hers.” McKnight’s Sept. 19 blogpost accusing Arch Daily of plagiarism described the Arch Daily post of being essentially a direct lift of her story minus “a few minor modifications.” McKnight noted that Arch Daily also published Architecture Record’s photos, which were attributed to Architecture Record.

Basulto noted that while Arch Daily did link to Architectural Record, “we weren’t explicit that this was Jenna’s article and thoughts, a huge mistake from our part and for that we are deeply sorry.” He expressed sympathy with McKnight’s “frustration,” noting that Arch Daily has had to deal with other sites “constantly scrapping and reproducing our content and images.”

I did two wrong and stupid things. The first concerns some people I interviewed over the years. When I recorded and typed up any conversation, I found something odd: points that sounded perfectly clear when you heard them being spoken often don’t translate to the page. They can be quite confusing and unclear. When this happened, if the interviewee had made a similar point in their writing (or, much more rarely, when they were speaking to somebody else), I would use those words instead. At the time, I justified this to myself by saying I was giving the clearest possible representation of what the interviewee thought, in their most considered and clear words …
The other thing I did wrong was that several years ago I started to notice some things I didn’t like in the Wikipedia entry about me, so I took them out. To do that, I created a user-name that wasn’t my own. Using that user-name, I continued to edit my own Wikipedia entry and some other people’s too. I took out nasty passages about people I admire – like Polly Toynbee, George Monbiot, Deborah Orr and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. I factually corrected some other entries about other people. But in a few instances, I edited the entries of people I had clashed with in ways that were juvenile or malicious: I called one of them anti-Semitic and homophobic, and the other a drunk. I am mortified to have done this, because it breaches the most basic ethical rule: don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you. I apologise to the latter group unreservedly and totally.

From a Guardian report:

…Hari is also handing back the George Orwell prize he won as “an act of contrition for the errors I made elsewhere, in my interviews” and will undertake “a programme of journalism training” during his leave of absence.
It is understood that provided no more damaging revelations emerge about the journalist during his unpaid leave, the Independent editor, Chris Blackhurst, will allow him to return to the paper.
In a statement, the paper said that Hari “admits the central accusations made against him, that of embellishment of quotations/plagiarism, and that it was he who used the pseudonym David Rose to attack his critics”.

… Poynter’s Kelly McBride, who regularly gets phone calls from editors seeking advice on how to handle plagiarism/fabrication cases, said she found that more newsrooms started firing staffers for plagiarism following the Blair scandal. That seems to have changed once the economic crisis hit newsrooms.

– via Have newsrooms relaxed standards, sanctions for fabrication and plagiarism?, a report by Mallary Tenore of Poynter. Also see her related piece that looks at how some plagiarism and fabrication cases were handled.

One thing that isn’t addressed in these otherwise interesting and useful articles is the need to examine the previous work of someone caught plagiarizing. Too many news organizations fail to take this essential step when deciding how to handle an incident.

A report from Westword:

Woody Paige wrote about one of his employers using a forum provided by the other one in “ESPN Empire One Great Story,” published in Sunday’s Denver Post.
Problem is, three quotes in the piece appeared word for word in a SportsBusiness Journal article from April written by John Ourand, who called out Paige on Twitter. Today, Paige is offering his apologies.

“It was not done maliciously or to take credit for something I didn’t do,” Paige stresses. However, he adds, “It was my mistake.” …

“We’ve agreed that the columns would be shorter, and my column was about six inches too long,” he says. “So I cut six inches — and in the final column I turned in, I improperly, incorrectly and unprofessionally cut the attribution to the SportsBusiness Journal.

“I knew Bill Daniels and wrote about him,” he continues. “He was a friend, and he told me about that stuff — but I didn’t have a direct quote. So doing my due diligence, I found that quote from Mr. Maxwell, who I knew was from Denver, and I thought it added to the fact that Bill Daniels was very instrumental in helping ESPN, and also that ESPN was thinking very seriously about moving here years and years ago. So I put it in — but then I screwed up the entire column by not attributing the quote.”

How is he trying to make amends?

“I talked to John and I apologized to him,” Paige allows. “I told him it was a mistake, and he accepted that and said he enjoyed the column.”

A correction will run in the paper and the Post also added this note to the online version of the column:

Note: This column has been updated from its print version to include an attribution.

If the print edition deserves a proper correction then so does the online version. The above is frustratingly vague.

Via Romenesko.

She recently published a series of posts about Margaret Wente, a high profile columnist with The Globe And Mail, a national newspaper in Canada. (Disclosure: I was a columnist and blogger for that paper for close to two years and have also contributed freelance articles.)

Wente’s work came under scrutiny a couple of years ago after the NYTPicker blog pointed out some similarities between her work and that of a column by Maureen Dowd. (Also see this related piece.)

Last month Wainio brought forth more examples where Wente used quotes and sentences from other people’s work without attribution. The on May 31 she came up with yet another example, this time showing that Wente stole a line from a New York Times article. Up until recently the Globe hasn’t really acknowledged Wainio’s concerns and examples. Then on Friday it issued a correction for the example from the New York Times:

The words “Americans…are fighting and dying, while the Afghans by and large stand by and do nothing to help them” in the Focus section of March 12 should have been attributed to Dexter Filkins in the New York Times.

To which Wainio asks: “Now, why not the rest?”

It’s a fair question. Wainio has offered plenty of other examples from Wente that fall into the same category as the Filkins line. The lack of clarity from the paper makes it seems as if there isn’t a clear attribution standard for columnists/journalists at The Globe And Mail.

As for Wente, she sometimes toes the line of what constitutes an acceptable rewrite, but there are other instances where she plucks quotes and words from elsewhere without offering proper attribution.

Here’s the editor’s note that was added to the offending piece:

This article in the April 17 Travel section included material that was taken without attribution from a documentary film. The article explored the Warhol museum in Medzilaborce and the reaction of Warhol’s relatives in nearby Mikova to the late artist’s notoriety. The writer, a freelance contributor to The Post, described a scene of men in rabbit-fur caps fixing a car exhaust and giving directions to the relatives’ home and mentioned passing a Soviet tank. Those scenes appeared in “Absolut Warhola,” a 2001 film by Stanislaw Mucha. The writer also used without attribution quotes from the documentary of conversations with Warhol’s cousin Michal Warhola and Warhol’s elderly aunt. In addition, while the article appeared to be based on a single trip, in fact it was based on several journeys, including one 10 years ago. The Post apologizes to filmmaker Stanislaw Mucha and to its readers for these lapses.

And here’s an excerpt from Pexton’s column:

… some of the quotes and scenes in the story were lifted, without attribution, from a documentary film about a journey to the museum made by Stanislaw Mucha in 2001. You can watch the film, “Absolut Warhola,” here on YouTube. A sharp-eyed Post reader remembered the documentary and informed the Travel section.

Travel editor Joe Yonan and deputy editor Zofia Smardz then contacted Rigney, asked him more questions and did more fact-checking on his story. Turns out Rigney, who has also written for the Christian Science Monitor, had made several trips, some dating back 10 years, to the Warhol museum, and the story was based on all of those, not just a recent trip.

When confronted by The Post, Rigney acknowledged that he “nicked’ some of the scenes and quotes from the documentary. Yonan and Smardz’s further fact-checking did determine that Rigney had been to the museum again recently and did in fact talk to the museum director.

They also fact-checked, as best as they could, two other stories Rigney had done for Travel, one about Berlin’s underground World War II bunkers and a second about Montenegro’s remote seaside towns. The bunker one checked out, but Rigney’s first-person account of his walking tours of Montenegran towns was almost impossible to verify, except that the towns described do exist, and seem to fit his descriptions.

There’s also a section that deals with fact checking, or the lack thereof at the Post and other newspapers:

But as for preventing any further instances of this kind of thing, here is the reality. The Post does not have an army of fact-checkers, as Kevin Sullivan, Post Sunday editor, explained. The paper can’t send staffers to Eastern Europe to fact-check every travel story. The Post is vulnerable to a one-shot deception by an unscrupulous freelancer.

Fact checking does not require you to send checkers around the world. Sure, that would be ideal, but it’s not what the New Yorker does to check articles. Sames goes for the other publications that employ staff or freelance checkers. It’s not clear if Sullivan made the comment about flying checkers to Eastern Europe, or if it was Pexton’s addition. Either way, it demonstrates a lack of understanding of the basics of fact checking.

“We can be ever-vigilant and spot-check what we can, but I’m afraid that if a writer is intent on plagiarizing or otherwise violating basic journalistic practices, given our resources it will indeed be difficult to always catch it,” added Joe Yonan, Travel editor.

Yonan is correct: the lack of controls at the Post and other newspapers makes it highly unlikely that a dedicated plagiarist would be caught prior to publication. As I previously detailed here and here, papers simply aren’t checking for plagiarism. As noted above, they also aren’t fact checking in any systematic way.

So, yes, this will just keep happening.