February 12, 2008 – 8:00 am
IvyGate and Gawker recently noted a recent incident of plagiarism at the Brown Daily Herald. Here’s the editors note:
Last week, as part of its usual fact-checking process, The Herald discovered that two news articles scheduled for publication contained material taken from other sources’ reporting without quotation or attribution. The articles were never printed. The Herald began a thorough review of the writers’ published work, as it does whenever inauthentic content is found.
During that review, two published articles were found that contained passages similar or identical to those in other publications.
“Common App now has rival in Universal App,” (Sept. 26, 2007) contains text similar or identical to writing in an article in the Yale Daily News (”Common App faces new online rival,” Sept. 7, 2007). The article also contains information from an interview not attributed to the News’ reporting.
“James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA structure, resigns after racist remarks,” (Oct. 31, 2007) contained quotations not attributed to reporting for an article in the Harvard Crimson (”Watson Apologizes Amid Uproar Over His Comments on Race,” Oct. 19, 2007).
The Herald makes every possible effort to verify the authenticity of our contributors’ content before publication. Our reporters and columnists receive continual training on the ethics of their work.
We sincerely apologize to the publications whose work was copied and to our readers.
I listed plagiarism at student newspapers among the Trends of Note in my 2007 wrap-up of the year in errors and corrections. Let’s hope this isn’t a sign of things to come for 2008.
On a related note, this incident inspired Gawker to get its Google Maps on. Maggie Shnayerson created a map of incidents of plagiarism at American universities. Have a look here.
November 9, 2007 – 8:00 am
A columnist at the Brown Daily Herald, a student newspaper, has been fired after editors discovered that six of his columns included plagiarized material. The same writer also plagiarized in a letter to the editor that was recently published in the New York Times. The Times published an Editor’s Note yesterday, and the student paper published one on Monday. From the Brown Daily Herald’s Note:
The Herald has discovered that six opinions columns by Zachary Townsend ‘09 published between 2005 and 2007 contained passages that are similar or identical to text that previously appeared in other published work. Such misrepresentation is a fundamental violation of Herald policy, and Townsend has consequently been dismissed as a Herald columnist.
On Oct. 24, in the routine fact-checking process used for all Herald news and opinions content, a Herald copy editor discovered that a portion of a column by Townsend that was slated for publication was nearly identical to a passage in “The Curricular Revolution,” an academic paper written by Katie Kinsey ‘09 and posted on the University Library Web site.
The column was not published. The Herald then began a thorough review of Townsend’s 15 past columns, which revealed that six of his published columns contained material similar or identical to material in previously published works. When questioned about this discovery, Townsend admitted that several columns contained unoriginal work.
The paper then lists the offending columns and offers an apology to readers. The paper did well to initiate an internal review as soon as a single instance of plagiarism was discovered. Here is the Times Note:
On Aug. 7, we published a letter from Zachary Townsend, a student at Brown University and a columnist for the student newspaper, about Japan’s role in sex slavery in World War II, and slavery in the world today. We have now learned that the letter included material taken without attribution from an article in the November/December 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, “The New Global Slave Trade,” by Ethan B. Kapstein.
The student newspaper, The Brown Daily Herald, said in an editors’ note on Monday that it had discovered after a review that several of Mr. Townsend’s columns had included material taken from other sources without attribution and that he had been dismissed as a columnist.
Reached by e-mail on Tuesday about his letter in The Times, Mr. Townsend said he had read the Foreign Affairs article but had not intended to plagiarize from it.
Had we known of the unattributed material, we would not have published Mr. Townsend’s letter.
