Tag Archives: Plagiarism

Plagiarism at The Daily Herald; Rick Reilly robbed again

July 31, 2008 – 12:45 pm

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Romenesko spotted this apology to readers from the executive editor of the The Daily Herald in Everett, Washington:

On June 3, this newspaper carried a column describing the travails of a girls’ basketball coach. Editors are deeply disturbed to learn that parts of the column were taken from a 2002 piece that appeared in Sports Illustrated.
This deception violates The Herald’s commitment to earning and maintaining community trust. It also violates journalistic standards: It is never acceptable to take credit for work that is not our own. We must be forthright about the matters we report as well as the sources of our information.
Herald sports writer John Sleeper has acknowledged that his column, “Trust Me, Coaching Girls Is a Whole New Ballgame,” included passages borrowed from a column written by Rick Reilly for Sports Illustrated. Sleeper has been placed on suspension pending an in-depth review of the matter.
The Herald has apologized to Reilly for the unauthorized use of his work. We also apologize to our readers and promise to do everything possible to prevent this kind of failure in the future.

The offending column is online here. As of now, it includes no mention of plagiarism.

This is the second time in less than two months that a sports journalist has been busted for plagiarising from an old Rick Reilly column. In early June, Dave Pratt, a Vancouver radio personality, lost his column in the Vancouver Province after he stole from a 2000 Reilly column in Sports Illustrated. When contacted for comment, he told the CBC, “It was a Saturday and I wanted to get out of [the office] before noon.”

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , , , | View Comments

Plagiarism at Web Worker Daily

June 16, 2008 – 8:00 am

A contributor to Web Worker Daily has been fired after he stole a post from MakeUseOf.com. The site posted an apology last week:

Earlier today, we posted an item written by one of our freelance contributors about little-used features of Gmail. What we did not realize was that the post lifted from an item published three days earlier on MakeUseOf.com.

Giga Omni Media considers such behavior unacceptable. As soon as we were alerted to the situation, we removed the post, and we have terminated all professional relations with the contributor. We sincerely apologize to the employees of MakeUseOf.com, in particular to the original post’s author, Ellie Harrison.

We would also like to apologize to our readers. Please be assured that going forward, we will be working even harder to ensure that such breaches of both ethics and professionalism do not occur. We will also be much more selective about the contributors with whom we work.

Some of the comments on the apology point out that the Web Worker Daily post did not copy the MakeUseOf piece word for word, but that it stole the idea and included the same content. Web Worker was smart to terminate its relationship with Jason Harris, rather than let him continue to produce stolen posts.

The question, of course, is whether he did this with other posts? Also, the URL of the offending article now leads to a 404 error. WWD should point it to the apology.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Online | Also tagged | View Comments

UPDATED: Vancouver Province fires columnist for plagiarism

June 5, 2008 – 8:00 am

The Vancouver Province has canceled a column by Dave Pratt, a Vancouver radio personality, after it was revealed he plagiarized from a Sports Illustrated article. The paper announced his firing in an article published yesterday.

…A reader alerted The Province to the plagiarism via e-mail after Pratt’s weekly column, called “Pratt’s Rant,” appeared in Tuesday’s editions of the newspaper.
The column, celebrating the winding down of the long career of Hockey Night In Canada play by play man Bob Cole, contained some clear similarities to the Reilly piece about legendary U.S. college basketball coach and broadcaster Al McGuire published in the Sept. 18, 2000, edition of Sports Illustrated.
The most striking was a passage in Reilly’s piece: “They say he was born 72 years ago last Thursday, but don’t believe it. McGuire dropped straight out of Guys and Dolls with a martini in one hand and a basketball in the other.”
Pratt wrote in Tuesday’s column in The Province: “Cole was born 75 years ago, but it’s more likely he dropped straight out of Guys and Dolls with a martini in one hand and a puck in the other.”
…In an interview, Pratt admitted he had taken material from the Reilly column.
“I did it, no question,” said Pratt. “It was a mistake. In our [radio] business, lines get used back and forth all the time. That particular line is a pretty famous line and I should have credited Reilly with it and I didn’t. It was a stupid mistake and something I regret and I’ll make damn sure I’ll never do it again.
“I’m looking for stuff from everywhere,” added Pratt. “We recycle everything. The sheer amount of volume we produce forces you to constantly be looking for different people’s ideas.”

Yes, I have to say it: the paper should review his previous columns to establish whether this is an isolated incident.

Thanks, Andrew!

UPDATE: When reached by phone, Pratt told the CBC that he plagiarized because “It was a Saturday and I wanted to get out of [the office] before noon.” One would assume that line will prevent him from ever working in print again. For now, it appears his radio job is safe. A spokesperson emailed the CBC to say, “We at the station are fully supporting David.”

It should also be noted that the Province story about the firing does not offer a full accounting of Pratt’s plagiarism. Andrew Bucholtz at Sporting Madness compared Pratt’s column to Reilly’s earlier story and it’s clear that Pratt stole much more than one “pretty famous line.”

“By my count, there are three paragraphs that are almost taken word-for-word from Reilly’s piece, with only the name changed from McGuire to Cole and the order of the paragraphs swapped,” Bucholtz wrote in an email to me. “The whole piece is pretty much exactly a carbon copy of Reilly’s article, just shuffled around a bit and with the names and dates altered.”

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers | Also tagged | View Comments

Seattle art critic plagiarized in work for Seattle P-I and The Stranger

May 26, 2008 – 8:00 am

Nate Lippens, a freelance art critic whose work has appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Stranger, has been exposed as a plagiarist.* Editor & Publisher has a story about his thefts, which were exposed by the Post-Intelligencer in a May 15 story and Note to Readers on the 14:

Work in the Seattle P-I by Nate Lippens, a freelance critic, is being examined after one of his art reviews was discovered to have striking similarities to criticism published two years earlier in Art in America magazine.
The P-I is looking at dozens of pieces written by Lippens for the newspaper between July 2006 and April 2008. All links to his articles through the P-I’s Web site have been withdrawn until they have been thoroughly examined and cleared to return to the site.
David McCumber, P-I managing editor, was disturbed by the similarities.
“Obviously,” he said, “content that co-opts others’ material without credit does not meet our standards, and it’s distressing under any circumstances. It’s a sharp reminder to our editors — really, to everyone in the profession — just how vulnerable we are, and how vigilant we must be.”
The alternative weekly The Stranger also has found similarities between work by Lippens and criticism in Art Forum magazine. Lippens freelanced for The Stranger starting in 2000, and was on the staff from 2004 to 2005. The Stranger is examining all of Lippens’ pieces published in its pages and has withdrawn links to them on its Web site, editor Christopher Frizzelle announced on thestranger.com Wednesday.
In an e-mail to the P-I on Wednesday, Lippens said: “I never knowingly plagiarized material. … I’m completely mortified and ashamed for betraying the implicit trust of my colleagues, friends and readers. I know that I can’t undo it or regain that trust but I do offer my sincerest apologies to everyone involved.”

…

*Correction May 26: the first sentence of this post called Lippens a “freelance at critic” instead of a “freelance art critic.” It has been corrected. Thanks, Charlene!

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers | Also tagged , | View Comments

Toronto TV news station ordered to air statement admitting it breached broadcast standards

May 9, 2008 – 8:00 am

The Torontoist blog has an interesting story about a man, a would-be burglar, and a series of remarkable photos. Plus, a little bit of copyright infringement.

In July of last year, Joel Charlebois, a Toronto resident, caught a man trying to break into his home. While trying to escape, the man fell from a second floor deck. He ended up breaking a leg and couldn’t complete his getaway. Charlebois called the police and then proceeded to take pictures of the man. Torontoist has the photos; Charlebois’ Flickr stream is here.

In a post on Flickr, Charlebois explains what happened next:

While waiting for the police and ambulance to arrive, I took photos of the burglar as he lay on the ground below. A newsman from Citytv also came to the scene. I refused his request for an interview. As he was poking around the property, I asked him to leave. We spoke briefly — he was nice enough; it’s the media that I find objectionable. I mentioned that I had taken pictures of the perpetrator and was looking forward to posting them on my Flickr site. He was interested in seeing them, so I provided him with a card. I left that afternoon for a weekend in Montreal. When I returned home, a friend showed me his recording of the news story which is when I discovered that Citytv had lifted my photos from my Flickr site for their broadcast.

The photos were aired on CablePulse24, a 24-hour local news station operated by CityTV. The station did not credit Charlebois as the photographer, and it did not contact him for permission prior to airing the photos. Charlebois registered a complaint with the station, writing:

The story that was broadcast on CityTV and CP24 (and presumably streamed on CP24.com, as well) included my photographs of the suspect as he lay on the ground below. The material was stolen from my Flickr site without my permission and without crediting me, for commercial use and your sole financial gain.

The station replied and said Charlebois had given verbal permission to use the photos by handing the reporter a business card and saying his photos would be on Flickr. Obviously, that doesn’t explain why the station didn’t credit Charlebois for the photos.

Unsatisfied with the reply, Charlebois filed a complaint with the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, a “non-governmental organization created by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) to administer standards established by its members, Canada’s private broadcasters.”

A CBSC panel found that the station violated “Article 11 regarding Intellectual Property of the RTNDA -The Association of Electronic Journalists of Canada RTNDA Code of (Journalistic) Ethics.” It reads:

Plagiarism is unacceptable. Broadcast journalists will strive to honour the intellectual property of others, including video and audio materials.

It’s interesting to see plagiarism mentioned in this example. The station downloaded (copied) Charlebois’ photos and then broadcast them without offering proper credit. That certainly seems like a form of plagiarism, though Charlebois avoided the p-word and simply called the station thieves. (For another, different example of visual plagiarism, see here and here.)

In its decision, the CBSC panel addressed the issue of “fair dealing” (known as “fair use” in the U.S.). This, in the words of the panel, offers “an exception … to the restrictive demands of copyright protection” for those engaged in news reporting. But one cornerstone of fair dealing is that news organizations must respect the copyright of others by offering credit to the copyright holder. That’s the “fair” part of the equation.

As a resolution, the CBSC has ordered CablePulse24 to air this statement twice during prime time:

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has found that CablePulse 24 breached Article 11 of the Radio-Television News Directors Association – The Association of Electronic Journalists’ Code of Ethics in its broadcast of a news report of a bungled burglary on July 25, 2007. As a part of its coverage of the story, CP24 included three still photographs of the injured burglar without providing any credit to the photographer, whose identity was known to the broadcaster. By failing to provide that accreditation, the broadcaster has failed to honour the intellectual property rights of the photographer, contrary to the provisions of Article 11 of the RTNDA Code of (Journalistic) Ethics.

Note that the statement does not mention Charlebois by name, nor does it require an apology by the station. Torontoist spoke to Charlebois to get his reaction:

Charlebois is ambivalent about the decision: he told Torontoist that he’s most concerned over credit—all that he wanted—because the statement that City must read makes no mention of his name. “This announcement mentions where [City] wronged,” he told us, “but it does not set things right if they continue to withhold credit for the work.” Even if they don’t say his name, however, Charlebois does find one thing particularly rewarding: that this was the first time the CBSC has called on a panel to resolve an issue of plagiarism under the Code of Ethics, and the resulting decision sets a precedent for news organizations around the country. “These matters,” Charlebois told us, “require discussion as traditional media wrestle with the worthy opponent it is finding in alternative/online media.”

It’s remarkable that Charlebois still won’t receive credit for his photographs.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Ombudsmen, Regret Articles, Television, Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , | View Comments

Wash Post’s kids poetry contest marred by plagiarism — again

May 5, 2008 – 8:00 am

One of the poems that KidsPost published April 29 as part of its poetry contest was not written by the child who submitted it. The poem that appeared as “Horrible, Just Horrible” was actually written by Shel Silverstein and is titled “One Out of Sixteen.” The child who sent in the poem originally told KidsPost that it was her work. Another poem on the page, titled “Eraser,” was inspired by, but not credited to, Louis Phillips, who wrote “The Eraser Poem.” Link

A winning poem from last year’s competition was also plagiarized. Post ombudsman Deborah Howell wrote a column about the contest.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | Also tagged | View Comments

Plagiarism at the Lancaster Sunday News

March 21, 2008 – 11:40 am

Jeffrey Pijanowski, a former editor at Newsday, emailed me this week about an incident of plagiarism at the Sunday News, a newspaper in Lancaster, PA. A member of the community submitted a comment piece about same-sex marriage and the paper published on March 2. A week later, the News published a small “correction/clarification”:

“Same-sex Marriage: Not a Civil Right, Not Good for Children,” by Richard Baer, of Cornell University, should have been referenced in last Sunday’s In My Opinion. The Perspective section piece, “People Must Rule on Same-sex Unions,” supported an amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution that would ban gay marriage, defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Pijanowski kindly tracked down both the offending comment piece and the work it copied. Roughly a third of the News comment piece was plagiarized from Baer’s work, yet the paper declined to run a proper apology or even use the dreaded “P” word. But this was clearly a case of theft.

“Now, as a news editor at Newsday, I spent six months in the Viewpoints section, where part of my job was to weed out the freelance and submitted opinion pieces for accuracy and other issues,” Pijanowski wrote in an email. “I know how hard it was to spot plagiarism before publication, especially in the days prior to Google. But this should have been rather easy to uncover. ”

It’s not the first example I’ve seen of plagiarism in a contributed comment piece. A prolific letter writer to the Philadelphia Daily News was given the opportunity write an op-ed and he ended up plagiarizing the vast majority of his contribution. A Philadelphia city official also committed plagiarism in a comment piece, and who can forget the serial plagiarism committed by a now former White House adviser who contributed columns to his local paper.

All this to say a five minute check on Google can go a long way.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged | View Comments

Plagiarism at the New York Times

March 12, 2008 – 8:00 am

Jack Shafer brings word of another incident of plagiarism at the New York Times:

New York Times Standards Editor Craig Whitney apologized to Manhattan Media this afternoon after today’s (March 11) Times lifted from a Manhattan Media story published on the Web and e-mailed to a media list yesterday.
The lift, taken from Manhattan Media’s City Hall piece about New York Lt. Gov. David Paterson, appeared at the end of a Times story about the succession process should Gov. Eliot Spitzer resign…
The Times article also reproduced a Paterson quotation from City Hall, which it did not attribute to City Hall.

Shafer’s column reproduces the letter Whitney sent to Manhattan Media and includes a response from David Blum of Manhattan Media, who isn’t fully satisfied.

“The key for me is that the Times accepted institutional responsibility for the transgression in near real time and apologized,” writes Shafer. “If only every case of plagiarism came this close to being settled this quickly.”

Update March 12: Here’s the Times Editors’ Note:

An article on Tuesday reported the reactions of political figures in Albany to the news that Gov. Eliot Spitzer had been a client of a prostitution ring. The last two paragraphs referred to remarks that Lt. Gov. David A. Paterson made at a breakfast meeting in October where he discussed his post, and it quoted him as saying he had been initially reluctant to attend a conference of lieutenant governors. The Times reporter and his editors were not clearly told by a contributing reporter that the quotation and the context had come from an article on the Web site of City Hall, one of the publications that organized the breakfast. The context should have been paraphrased and the information attributed to the site. Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Online, Plagiarism | Also tagged , , | View Comments

Shafer finds another example of plagiarism by Times reporter

March 5, 2008 – 10:45 pm

Last week, Slate’s Jack Shafer revealed that Times reporter Alexei Barrionuevo had plagiarized part of an article about cheap cocaine in Argentina. (Regret report here.) In response, the Times published an Editors’ Note but declined to detail the action it would take in response to the revelation. I wondered if this meant the Times would not be conducting an investigation into Barrionuevo’s previous work.

Now, a week after his first column, Shafer has returned with another example of theft by Barrionuevo. Here’s what Times Managing Editor Jill Abramson said about this recent example:

It appears that Alexei did not fully understand Times policy of not using wire boilerplate and giving credit when we do make use of such material. As I mentioned to you, other papers do permit unattributed use of such material. He should not have inserted wire material into his Times coverage without attribution.

That said, because the new examples do not involve many words or an original thought, the transgression does not seem to be as serious as the first instance on paco.

Even if the paper believes the first example is worse than the second, there’s the larger concern that Barrionuevo is a repeat plagiarist. It’s surprising that Abramson is offering justification for his lapses rather than saying the paper will investigate the matter. How many examples are required before a red flag goes up? The Times should apply some reporting to this situation and discover if there are other skeletons lurking in Barrionuevo’s closet — and in the paper’s archives. Then, with that knowledge, it can take the appropriate action.

Of course, this should have been done in the first place. At this point, Barrionuevo has two strikes against him and the paper is on the defensive. It’s also a good bet that others will play the Nexis/Google game with Barrionuevo’s previous work. The clock is ticking.

Ryan Tate at Gawker also raises an important point. First, he quotes from Shafer’s first column:

Barrionuevo had been working on the paco story for a couple of weeks and realized at the end of the process that he needed definitional passages about the drug to distinguish it from crack cocaine. [Times Managing Editor Jill Abramson] says that instead of consulting his notes, which he claims contained the information, he relied on Google. Indeed, a copy of the Herald story can be found via Google.

Writes Tate:

So reporter Barrionuevo was looking for basic information about a drug at the center of his Page One story, but instead of turning to his notes, which he claimed contained the information, he just ran a Google search and copied over what he found on the Herald website. It’s bad that he essentially copied the text, but also how did he even know the information he was passing on was accurate? If he couldn’t remember the details of what was in his notes, how could he be sure the Herald information matched those details?

Also puzzling is the fact that a Times reporter with many stories under his belt seemingly “did not fully understand Times policy of not using wire boilerplate and giving credit when we do make use of such material.” Questions abound.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , | View Comments

The serial plagiarist in the White House

March 4, 2008 – 8:00 am

At the end of last week, it emerged that Timothy S. Goeglein, who until his resignation on Friday was the White House aide responsible for working with conservative and Christian groups, had plagiarized in one of his regular guest columns published in the News-Sentinel. Former News-Sentinel columnist Nancy Nall* revealed the plagiarism. From there, it only got worse. In the end, an investigation by the paper revealed Goeglein was a serial plagiarist. The paper discovered 20 instances of theft, and subsequently tacked on seven more. A full package of articles is online here. From the paper:

Contacted Sunday, the Fort Wayne native attributed the plagiarism to shortcomings in his character: “Pride. Vanity. It’s all my fault. It’s inexcusable. What I did is wrong. I categorically apologize.”
Until Friday, Goeglein was special assistant to President Bush and public liaison deputy director. Early Friday morning, Michigan blogger and former News-Sentinel columnist Nancy Nall posted excerpts of a Thursday guest column by Goeglein and nearly identical paragraphs from a 10-year-old essay in the Dartmouth Review by Jeffrey Hart. Less than 12 hours later, after The News-Sentinel found plagiarism in 20 of 38 columns dating to 2000, Goeglein resigned.
An examination of 39 more guest columns from Goeglein published during the 1990s turned up seven that pulled material from earlier-published sources without attribution, including another from Hart.
Evidence of plagiarism appears as early as 1995. During 1998 and 1999, six of 15 guest columns written by Goeglein were plagiarized. In 1998, he was press secretary for former Indiana Sen. Dan Coats. In 1999, he was communications director for The Campaign for Working Families in Washington, D.C.
Goeglein’s guest columns were unsolicited submissions to the editorial page. He was not paid, and there were no deadlines for their completion, News-Sentinel Editor Kerry Hubartt said. Hubartt announced Friday the newspaper will no longer publish columns from Goeglein.
In multiple e-mails to The New-Sentinel on Friday, Goeglein, 44, apologized for his actions. “I am more apologetic than you know, and from my heart. Please know how deeply sorry I am,” he wrote to Editorial Page Editor Leo Morris.
On Sunday, Goeglein said, “I have no plans at this point.” His responsibilities in the president’s administration ended Friday with his resignation, he said.

Romenesko has been tracking this (1,2,3,4,5,6) and AP also has a story up. Of particular interest is a fascinating article Nall wrote for Slate. She recounts how she uncovered the plagiarism, and details how bloggers and commenters moved the story forward at a rapid pace:

Saying the news cycle moves at an ever-increasing pace doesn’t even qualify as a cliché anymore. But this felt like a new record. Reporting in one minute, writing in one hour, a whole career undone in one day. Reading the comments piling up on the original post was a surreal experience, as one reader after another checked in with evidence, with links. It was journalism as hive mind. “Everyone wants to play now,” someone wrote after posting a link.

People, including myself, often point to “Rathergate” as a case study in networked fact checking. In my book, I dedicate a chapter section to the “new checkers,” the cadre of engaged citizens who mobilize to act as external fact checkers. The Goeglein story is the latest example of this phenomenon. From Nall:

I spent much of the weekend thinking about all this. My ex-colleague Leo Morris, who edits the op-ed pages Tim used as his canvas for all those years, did as well and wrote on his blog: “This wasn’t mere hardware-pushed speed—a breaking news story for which people all around the world could see a grainy cell-phone photo five minutes after it happened. This was the online dynamic—people talking about the story and adding to it as it got bigger and more complex throughout the day.”
The story was new media, but, ironically, at its core was a very old-media concern—getting the little things right. Friday night, I got an e-mail from a fan of that notable Dartmouth professor of philosophy whose name started this whole thing. And guess what? Jeffrey Hart misspelled his name. It’s Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, not Eugene, not Hussey. When I entered the misspelled name into Google, it only turned up a couple pages of hits, and Hart’s essay was on the first page, so I spotted it right away. But if Hart had spelled the name correctly and Goeglein had pasted it as such in his own column, Hart’s decade-old Dartmouth Review essay, which mentioned the professor only in passing, would probably have been far back in the queue in the 20,000 Google hits his real name gets. And I probably would not have seen it—after all, I was just trying to find out how “notable” he was.

Remarkable. Goeglein was busted thanks to a plagiarized typo.

*Correction March 4: This post mistakenly referred to Nancy Nall as “Nancy Nail.” It has been corrected. Thanks, Kevin!

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Government, Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged | View Comments

Plagiarism at the Ventura County Star

February 29, 2008 – 12:02 pm

Romenesko spotted this report from the Ventura County Star about a surfing columnist that was fired due to plagiarism:

The weekly column, Surfing Scene, by David Burroughs has been cancelled by the Ventura County Star because of evidence of plagiarism.
Burroughs, who was hired on contract to write the column, acknowledged that material in two of his columns was obtained from other sources and used without attribution.
Burroughs explained to The Star that he did not believe the use of the material was plagiarism.
He believed by using mostly quotations from other sources that it was not plagiarism.
“We have zero tolerance for plagiarism,” said Star Managing Editor John Moore. “Our contract with our freelance writers includes a journalistic integrity clause that requires them to write their pieces in accordance with the law and generally accepted journalistic practices.’ ”
The plagiarism came to light when Paul Glickman, news director of Southern California Public Radio, contacted The Star regarding a Burroughs’ column about expansion of Highway 241 toll road in Orange County through a prime surfing spot.
Glickman pointed out that at least seven paragraphs of that column came directly from an online version of a radio story done for KPCC radio by Susan Valot. The Burroughs column ran Jan. 22 in The Star and Valot’s piece aired Jan. 9.
The Star confirmed that the material in Surfing Scene came from her story and Burroughs admitted that was his source for it.
Further investigation by The Star uncovered a Feb. 5 column by Burroughs regarding the theft of a web camera trained on a popular East Coast surfing spot.
Much of six paragraphs in that column came from a Jan. 27 story in the New York Times by Corey Kilgannon.
Burroughs admitted that was his source for the material.
Burroughs had no journalism experience when he was hired by The Star in 2007 to begin his column, which appeared Tuesdays in the Sports section…

It’s good that the paper’s contract includes an “integrity clause,” but having it on paper isn’t enough to ensure contributors — staff or freelance — understand what is and isn’t plagiarism. A contract can help indemnify the paper, but it doesn’t do anything in terms of training. If the paper is hiring people with no journalism background, then it is responsible for making sure they understand the fundamentals of the profession.

I haven’t seen this specific contract, but providing a basic guide of Dos and Don’ts to any new contributor could be more helpful than a clause that many folks will gloss over. Prepare the guide and then require the assigning editor to take a few minutes and explain it to the contributor. A 10-minute phone conversation aided by a paper-based guide can help avoid a situation like this. It’s worth the time and effort.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged | View Comments

Plagiarism at the New York Times

February 28, 2008 – 5:41 pm

While preparing a column this week, Slate’s Jack Shafer stumbled upon an incident of plagiarism at the New York Times. Shafer wrote a column about the theft and the Times has now responded with an Editor’s Note:

A front-page article on Saturday described a cocaine epidemic in Argentina fed by the consumption of paco, an addictive smokable cocaine residue. The article included an explanatory paragraph about paco’s addictive power and toxicity that repeated material from a 2006 article published in The Miami Herald, without attributing it to the newspaper. The correspondent, who had done his own research with Argentine and Brazilian officials on the drug and its effects, should have summarized it in his own words, or credited The Herald.
The passage in question is this:
“Paco is highly addictive because its high lasts just a few minutes—and is so intense that many users smoke 20 to 50 paco cigarettes a day to try to make its effects linger. Paco is even more toxic than crack cocaine because it is made mostly of solvents and chemicals like kerosene, with just a dab of cocaine, Argentine and Brazilian drug enforcement officials said.”

Times Managing Editor Jill Abramson told Shafer that, “I think when you take material almost word-for-word and don’t credit it, it is [plagiarism].” Abramson declined to detail if Alexei Barrionuevo, the writer, will face discipline. The Times has a policy of not talking publicly about personnel issues, which Shafer notes is common at many organizations. But does this mean the public won’t know whether or not the paper decided to review Barrionuevo’s previous work, something that should be standard practice after any incident of plagiarism?

Hopefully the Public Editor will investigate how the paper is handling the issue. At this point, the lack of information leaves Barrionuevo open to speculation about his previous work for the paper. It’s one thing to keep the specific discipline an internal matter. But the post-Blair era requires a paper to be transparent about how it handles an incident of plagiarism. As of now, readers know nothing about how the paper treats such a serious offense.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , | View Comments

Plagiarism at the Miami Herald

February 14, 2008 – 8:00 am

A correction:

A story about the Broward Sheriff’s Office’s semiannual awards ceremony, which appeared on Page 2B of the Broward edition on Feb. 6, included several paragraphs that should have been attributed to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Details and quotations from the Sun-Sentinel story, including the comments of civilian honoree John Clark, were used in The Herald’s report on the event without appropriate attribution. This is a violation of The Miami Herald’s editorial policies and is under internal review. Link

An editor’s note/apology is typically the method for revealing an incident of plagiarism. Let’s hope details of the internal review are made public.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , | View Comments

Plagiarism at the Brown Daily Herald

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.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , | View Comments

NY Press columnist resigns over plagiarism

January 25, 2008 – 8:00 am

An editor’s note form the New York Press:

It has come to our attention that some of the questions in this week’s debut of the New York Press’s new sex-advice column, “Lip Service,” were taken from past columns by Dan Savage, the nationally-syndicated sex-advice columnist and editor of The Stranger. The author of the column, Claudia Lonow, a television writer based in Los Angeles who had not previously written for a newspaper, used the questions to provide material for her inaugural column, in the absence of real questions from readers. It had been our understanding that the questions for her first column came from friends. She has told us she was unaware that using questions from Savage’s column was a breach of journalism ethics. She has offered her resignation, and we’ve accepted it. We apologize to our readers, and to Dan Savage, for this error in judgment. Link

Wow, one column and out. This is a good argument for making sure new writers/journalists fully understand all relevant ethical guidelines. Jezebel appears to have played a hand in revealing the theft.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , | View Comments

Sunday Times plagiarizes from Radar magazine

January 11, 2008 – 8:00 am

It appears that Radar magazine produces some very enticing content. Last year, a Chilean magazine plagiarized from Radar’s Toxic Bachelors feature. Then, this past Sunday, the London Sunday Times “inadvertently” plagiarized content from a Radar piece, “100 Reasons Why You’re Still Single.” A report from the Guardian:

A piece headlined “50 Reasons Why You’re Still Single” appeared in the Sunday Times Style magazine, bylined to the title’s deputy editor, Camilla Long.
The feature was a humorous miscellany of men and women’s irritating personal habits, such as “use the word babe” and “posed with your cat on your Facebook profile”.
However, more than 15 of the Sunday Times’ 50 entries were substantially similar to a list, “100 Reasons Why You’re Still Single”, that appeared in US pop culture Radar magazine last September.
The Style magazine editor, Tiffany Darke, confirmed that the magazine’s deputy editor, Camilla Long, penned the piece.
Darke also confirmed that many of the items were the same as those included in Radar’s list.
She told MediaGuardian.co.uk that Style magazine had decided to run a piece on the theme and invited contributions from friends, contacts and colleagues.
The Sunday Times’ “50 Reasons…” piece had separate men’s and women’s lists with 25 items each, while Radar had a single list with 100 entries.
Darke said the items that were the same as on Radar’s list came from an unnamed contributor and the magazine ran them without checking…

The Guardian piece also includes a comparison between the Radar and Times articles. Hopefully the paper will do away with publishing unchecked information from “unnamed contributors.”

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged | View Comments

How to spot a plagiarist/fabulist

January 8, 2008 – 8:00 am

John McIntyre, the Baltimore Sun’s assistant managing editor for the copy desk, has written an excellent blog post about plagiarism and fabrication. McIntyre is the language and usage guru at the paper. He uses that knowledge base to offer up a list of ways to spot a plagiarist or fabulist. These should be provided to every editor in every newsroom:

Changes in diction: If the vocabulary of an otherwise amateurish student writer or cliche-ridden hack journalist should abruptly grow sophisticated, lifting is likelier than an infusion from the muse.

Changes in syntax: Same thing. If a writer who struggles to cobble together a noun and a verb suddenly masters the compound-complex sentence, with attendant Ciceronian participial ornaments, it’s time to start looking elsewhere.

Specialized information: Ask Howard Baker’s question from the Watergate hearings of beloved memory: What did he know, and when did he know it? Sudden access to biographical details, historical information, ecclesiastical terminology or scientific or medical expertise has to have come from somewhere. Demand an explanation of the source.

Dubious sources: Any article based on a single source is automatically suspect — how can you tell that the source wasn’t lying? Where’s the confirmation? Similarly, anything based on second- or third-hand sources demands scrutiny. In addition, readers are justifiably suspicious of anonymous sources. Even when anonymity has been granted for good reason, such as the source’s reasonable fear of physical or economic injury, the writer should be obliged to reveal the source to the assigning editor, acquire supporting information, and give the reader as much information as is prudent about the anonymous source’s credibility.

Improbabilities: When Jack Kelly filed his famous story with USA Today about seeing, in the aftermath of a bombing, human heads rolling down the street, their eyelids still blinking, it would have been a good thing for the paper if an editor had said, “What the hell?” and followed up. In journalism, as in investment offers, if it looks too good to be true. …

Here’s more great advice about how to follow up if you suspect plagiarism or fabrication, and what to do if your discover it:

Your job is to be skeptical, not gullible. Any writer’s work ought to stand up to questioning, particularly about sourcing. So ask the questions.

As it happens, the very ease of theft that the Internet provides also offers ease of detection. Use Lexis-Nexis or Google to find information on the subject that the suspect article covers. Do searches on distinctive and anomalous phrases. (Some colleges and universities employ specialized software and run term papers through it.) Check it out.

Follow up. The first question that must always be asked when a plagiarism is detected is this: Has he/she done this before? This has to be checked out, but it won’t be unless you, who have detected the misdeed, report it to someone in authority.

Don’t agonize over fear of appearing to be an informer. If the instance you identify is a first-time mistake made out of ignorance, you may save a colleague’s career. If it turns out to be one in a pattern of lies, then the career wasn’t worth saving.

Seriously, this should be handed out to every editor in every newsroom.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Behind the scenes, Fabrication, Plagiarism | Also tagged | View Comments

Plagiarism at the Weekly Standard

January 3, 2008 – 8:00 am

An alert reader pointed us to an apology contained in the Dec 31 issue of the Weekly Standard. The magazine admits that an article by David Satter contained “several passages…taken without attribution from Jonas Bernstein’s articles in the Eurasia Daily Monitor.” The magazine avoids the “p” word, but does include an example of an offending passage. The apology:

SEVERAL PASSAGES in David Satter’s “Russia Incorporated” (December 17) were taken without attribution from Jonas Bernstein’s articles in the Eurasia Daily Monitor, published by the Jamestown Foundation. For instance–
Bernstein: “For now, however, Putin appears to be trying to maintain a balance between the warring factions: After Cherkesov’s article appeared in Kommersant, Putin publicly scolded him, telling Kommersant that it is ‘wrong to bring these kinds of problems to the media’ and that someone who claims a war between security agencies is going on ‘should, first of all, be spotless.’ Yet the following day, Putin created a new state committee to fight illegal drugs and named Cherkesov as its chief” (Eurasia Daily Monitor, Nov. 2, 2007).
Satter: “Putin appears to be trying to maintain a balance between the warring sides. After Cherkesov’s article appeared in Kommersant, Putin publicly criticized him, saying it is ‘wrong to bring these kinds of problems to the media.’ Yet the following day, Putin created a new state committee to fight illegal drugs and named Cherkesov as its chief.”
THE WEEKLY STANDARD and the author apologize to Mr. Bernstein, to the Jamestown Foundation, and to our readers. We also commend to our readers the articles by Mr. Bernstein that served as source material: “Finansgroup: How Russia’s Siloviki Do Business,” EDM, Nov. 30, 2007; “Stanislav Belkovsky: Putin Will Leave Power Completely,” EDM, Nov. 19, 2007; and “St. Petersburg Poisonings: Part of Siloviki Factional Fight?” EDM, Nov. 2, 2007. All of these may be found at the Eurasia Daily Monitor website, www.jamestown.org/edm.

An apology is good, but the Weekly Standard doesn’t say anything about having examined Satter’s previous work for evidence of plagiarism. Did it undertake such an examination?

Thanks, Kevin!

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Magazines, Major Errors, Plagiarism | Also tagged | View Comments

Press release printed “nearly verbatim” in paper

December 17, 2007 – 8:00 am

An Editor’s Note:

In the Statesman’s Schools column on Wednesday’s Page B2 , the first three paragraphs of an item about school breakfasts were taken nearly verbatim from a news release by the Center for Public Policy Priorities. It is not the American-Statesman’s practice to print items from outside sources verbatim and without proper credit. We regret the error.

Though the note consciously avoids using the word, this does fall into the plagiarism category.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , | View Comments

2007 Plagiarism/Fabrication Round-Up

December 11, 2007 – 6:00 am

This is the least enjoyable part of running this site, but we suppose somebody’s got to do it. Herewith, a month-by-month report of instances of plagiarism and fabrication in the press. Of particular note is the high number of incidents of plagiarism at student newspapers this year. A disturbing trend, to be sure.

January
A columnist and the administrative assistant to the editor at the San Antonio Express-News resigned after she was found plagiarizing from Wikipedia and other sources in three columns. Link

February
MSNBC.com removed a story how to sell a home in the slow winter season after it was discovered parts of it were plagiarized from an article on About.com. MSNBC did not the name the offender. Link

The Michigan Daily, a student newspaper, fired a writer after discovering plagiarism in four articles. The paper did not name the writer. Correction: The paper did name the writer.Link

March
The New York Times published an editor’s note after readers pointed out “a number of resemblances” between an essay in the Book Review and a passage in the book, “Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader.” It was not definitively determined to be plagiarism. Link

The Boston Globe suspended a sports columnist for two months without pay after it was revealed he plagiarized from a story in the News Tribune of Tacoma, Wash. Link

The chief editorial writer of Yamanashi Nichinichi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, was fired after admitting he had plagiarized in at least 15 editorials. Link

The New York Times published a letter to the editor about Dick Cheney that was later revealed to have been almost entirely “copied from an article about Mr. Cheney and the trial from the previous day’s newspaper.” Link

April
CBS News fired a producer after she plagiarized from the Wall Street Journal for a video essay on “Couric & Co.,” the Katie Couric/group blog on the CBS News website. Though CBS did not name her, the NY Sun later did. Link, link

The Daily Pennsylvanian, a student newspaper, fired a columnist after one of her submissions “bore uncanny similarities to a Yahoo! Food piece from March.” Link

The Washington Post published this correction: “One of the poems that KidsPost published as part of its poetry contest on Tuesday was not written by the child who submitted it. The poem that appeared as “Who Am I?” was actually written by J. Patrick Lewis and published in his book “Monumental Verses.” The child who sent the poem to KidsPost said she didn’t realize that entries to the contest had to be original. But copying something that someone else wrote without giving them credit is plagiarism, and it’s wrong.” Link

May
The Times UK ran a correction after “Some portions of an article about Hollywood romantic comedies” were not “attributed to… a New York Daily News article on the same subject from January.” Joe Neumaier, the author of the News article wrote the Times to say he considered it to be a case of plagiarism. Link

Chilean magazine Cosas withdrew an issue from newsstands after Radar magazine accused it of plagiarism. The Radar article “Toxic Bachelors” was translated and reproduced in Cosas by the magazine’s New York correspondent. Link

June
None.

July
Japanese newspaper Shizuoka Shimbun apologized after a front-page story about the death of a former prime minister was revealed to have been plagiarized from Wikipedia. Link

August
A reporter for the Explorer, weekly paper in Arizona, was fired after they were found to have taken a story written for a journalism class and, with a few minor updates, passed it off as new work. Aside from the dishonesty, one of the problems was that the piece was outdated and therefore contained inaccurate information. The paper did not name the reporter. Link

The Guardian published a correction and offered an apology after “A short introduction to an article about Russian oligarchs included three paragraphs that were substantially similar to paragraphs contained in the introduction to another, earlier, article, published in May, in the Exile – an English-language newspaper based in Moscow.” Link

September
None.

October
A sports reporter at the News Leader in Staunton, Virginia, was fired on Tuesday after an internal investigation revealed she “fabricated at least four stories and plagiarized from other stories on the Internet.” Link

A sex columnist at the GW Hatchet, a student newspaper, was fired after a column he wrote “borrowed ideas” from a book and website. Link

November
A columnist at the Brown Daily Herald, a student newspaper, was 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 published in the New York Times. Link

A professor at the Missouri School of Journalism lost his column in a university paper staffed by journalism students and faculty after admitting he committed “unintentional” plagiarism. Link

The San Antonio Express-News fired a longtime sports reporter after he plagiarized from www.bowl.com and www.pbatour.com. Many people took to the comments section of our post to protest his firing and question whether he had in fact plagiarized. Update April 28, 2010: Harry Page is not a plagiarist. Read more here.  Link

The Economist published a correction after a freelance writer in Uganda plagiarized from the Daily Monitor in Uganda and used the work in a piece for the magazine. Link

December
After four-and-a-half months of re-reporting, The New Republic retracted articles written by its Baghdad Diarist. Link

The National Review Online had to retract a story and clarify another after questions were raised about the veracity of the reporting, though the publication denied any fabrication occurred. Link

Dhia al-Kawaz, the editor of the Jordan-based Asawat al-Iraq news agency, admitted he fabricated the story that 11 members of his family had been killed in Iraq. In reality, one member was killed. Link

Did we miss any? Let us know.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Plagiarism, Regret Articles | Also tagged , | View Comments

Plagiarism at the Economist

November 20, 2007 – 8:00 am

Our article on Ugandan guards working in Iraq, written for us by a freelance journalist in Uganda, was drawn substantially from an article published previously in Uganda’s Daily Monitor and written by David Herbert. We were, of course, unaware of this. We apologise to Mr Herbert, the Daily Monitor and our readers. Link

This is a situation where the Economist, which does not have bylines on its articles, should name the offending party. Has he or she written for the magazine before? And if so, have those articles been checked for plagiarism? Naming the offender would also enable other publications to check if they have published articles by the writer.

Thanks, Dave!

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Magazines, Major Errors, Plagiarism | Also tagged | View Comments

What IT security can teach us about accuracy

November 15, 2007 – 8:00 am

Bruce Schneier, one of the leading thinkers in IT security, recently wrote a column for Wired.com in which he uses the example of corrupt NBA referee Tim Donaghy to examine systems that suffer from single points of failure. The same concept directly relates to journalism and accuracy.

What sorts of systems — IT, financial, NBA games or whatever — are most at risk of being manipulated? The ones where the smallest change can have the greatest impact, and the ones where trusted insiders can make that change.

Donaghy used his position to try and influence the outcome of games, and he was able to because of the way the NBA games operate:

Because individual players matter so much, a single referee can affect a basketball game more than he can in any other sport. Referees call fouls. Contact occurs on nearly every play, any of which could be called as a foul. They’re called “touch fouls,” and they are mostly, but not always, ignored. The refs get to decide which ones to call.

Schneier lists other examples of jobs where people are “both trusted insiders and single points of catastrophic failure.” It could be a “dishonest computer-repair technician…a corrupt judge, police officer, customs inspector, border-control officer, food-safety inspector…”

Or a journalist. Newsrooms build in layers of auditing in an attempt to mitigate the ability of a trusted insider to subvert the system: copy editors, assignment editors etc. But each person in the chain of audit (editing process) is both a point of quality control and a potential point of failure. We then attempt to mitigate that reality by requiring reporters to take notes or record interviews, cite sources, and talk to experts.

Yet we still see people like Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, trusted insiders who become single points of catastrophic failure. Incidents of plagiarism, fabrication, and extreme error abound. Clearly, we need to evolve our audit systems. The current reality of shrunken newsrooms — and therefore reduced audit controls — makes it even more imperative that we innovate new ways of ensuring quality. The speed of online news also requires us to find ways to do it at a faster pace.

Yes, a tough challenge. But an exciting one, too.

“All systems have trusted insiders,” according to Schneier. “All systems have catastrophic points of failure. The key is recognizing them, and building monitoring and audit systems to secure them.”

So what does the ideal newsroom monitoring and auditing system look like? Likely a combination of prevention — fact checking, plagiarism detection, training, editing etc. — mixed with post-publication/post-broadcast error tracking and analysis. These elements demand a mix of people, processes and technology. The challenge is creating the right mix and then constantly managing, evolving and improving the system.

It’s a difficult task, but the status quo is a recipe for repeated “catastrophic failures.”

Would you keep following the NBA if you knew another Tim Donaghy was inevitable?

Have an idea for newsroom auditing? Share it in the comments.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Regret Articles | Also tagged , , , | View Comments

Journalism professor loses column over plagiarism

November 13, 2007 – 8:00 am

This has already been a bad year for plagiarism at student newspapers, but this latest incident, spotted by Romenesko, is very surprising. A professor at the Missouri School of Journalism  has lost his column in a university paper staffed by journalism students and faculty after admitting he committed “unintentional” plagiarism. From a story in the paper:

Last Sunday, columnist John Merrill wrote about the MU Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Quotes and other phrases in the column were repeated directly from an Oct. 5 article in The Maneater without crediting that newspaper or the article’s author, Anna Koeppel.
That was wrong.
Missourian policy does not allow any writer to appropriate someone else’s words as his own, even when those words are within quotation marks. In the column, three quotes, and about half a sentence, were taken from Koeppel’s story.
Several journalists and journalism educators I spoke with referred to the use as the ethical equivalent of a misdemeanor, not a felony.
I believe the Missourian, and the School of Journalism, must hold itself to a higher standard.
The newspaper’s policy prohibits “using material from other publications without attribution.”
As such, the Missourian will no longer run columns by Professor Merrill.

Merill says, “I assure you that it was ‘unintentional’ plagiarism, and I had no reason to make it look as if I got these quotes from the sources directly. I was using them as a springboard for my opinion. But I did it, and I’m sorry. Careless, I’ll admit, but not intentional. All these dozens and dozens of columns and some 30 books and innumerable magazine and newspaper articles and never before have I been accused of plagiarism.”

The paper reviewed his last year of columns and found that “none had the same amount of lifted material as the one Sunday; however, there were five more columns in which at least one quote had been taken from other publications without attribution.”

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged | View Comments

Updated: Plagiarism at the San Antonio Express-News

November 13, 2007 – 8:00 am

Editor’s note April 28, 2010: Harry Page subsequently sued the paper and its owner for character defamation, and he received a settlement in April 2010. Harry Page is not a plagiarist. Read more here.

Talk about burying the lead.
After spending the majority of his column chastising a television station and newspaper for lifting material from his paper, San Antonio Express-News public editor Bob Richter finally gets around to the real news: his paper recently fired a sports reporter for committing plagiarism.

…veteran E-N sports staffer Harry Page was terminated last week for lifting information — which he presented in his bowling blog as his own — from two websites: www.bowl.com, the Web site of the U.S. Bowling Congress, and www.pbatour.com, the Professional Bowlers Association Tour Web site.
The plagiarized work appeared only on MySA.com and has been removed.
Page had worked in the sports department since April 19, 1970, and was one of the first people to greet me here when I joined the sports staff in 1978. I hate to see him go out like this, but, as Editor Robert Rivard told staff, the newspaper has “zero tolerance” for plagiarism.
It was an ethics wakeup call for Express-News journalists and, I hope, will be for our brethren in broadcast news as well.

This important information should have been the main focus of his column, and it would have been good to understand how the plagiarism was discovered, and whether or not Page’s previous work was examined. The paper removed the offending articles, but could more be lurking in the archives? Let’s hope not, but it would be nice to know for sure.

Kudos to Romenesko for spotting it.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged | View Comments

Plagiarism at the Brown Daily Herald

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.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , , , | View Comments
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