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.

After publishing the cartoon, the paper followed up with an issue that dedicated its entire front page to an apology. That’s beyond rare. Here’s the full apology:

To the NIU and DeKalb community:

We would like to sincerely apologize for the cartoon published in Wednesday’s edition of the Northern Star. The publication was a clear misjudgment on our part. Though the aim of a political cartoon is to provide its readers with a social commentary, we realize this cartoon in particular overstepped the bounds of human decency good taste.

We understand the topic depicted is incredibly sensitive to the people on this campus and in this community.

We know you’re angry. We know you’re hurt. We know we messed up, and we feel awful about it.

The Feb. 14, 2008 shootings were a terrible tragedy to befall NIU, and no amount of time can change the situation or undo the damage. Any shooting, whether on campus or off, is not funny and should never be presented in a joking manner. We take the Feb. 14 shootings very seriously. Some of our staff members were in Cole Hall on that day; it hits home for us, too.

That said, the Northern Star is a student-run news organization, and although we try our hardest to provide our readers with professional and well-thought-out content each day, sometimes we fail.

This time we failed.

Though this error was a human mistake, we don’t want you to think that’s our excuse. We take full responsibility for our actions, and we will strive to do better in the future.

Sincerely,
The Editorial Board

While recognising that College societies may sometimes stray beyond their official raisons d’etre to pursue a wider range of interests, we were incorrect to report in our last issue that the Literary Society was hosting a “Boob Club” (What’s on this coming fortnight, page 9, October 14). They had, of course, settled for a Book Club.

The above was originally published October 2008, but warrants reproduction. Thanks, Martin!

Due to spacing constraints, outstanding errata will be available on our web site at mcgilldaily.com and will be published in our next issue.
The Daily apologizes for the delay.

Thanks, Steve!

On November 28, 2008, The Ubyssey published an article entitled “RCMP have ‘final solution’ to the ‘fraternity issue.’” The article in question was part of The Ubyssey’s annual all-satire edition. The Ubyssey and staff regret having left its readers with the impression that the RCMP on campus has used violence or excessive force or acted in any manner similar to the Nazi party during the Second World War. The Ubyssey and staff also regret any damage the article may have caused to the reputation of the RCMP member who was named in the article, Cpl. Robert Worsley.

The UBC Insiders blog has some additional background:

What the heck is going on here? Paul Bucci, the paper’s coordinating editor, sat down with UBC Insiders today to explain the circumstances around this unusual correction. Over the summer, legal counsel for Cpl. Worsley sent a letter to The Ubyssey threatening legal action if a correction was not issued. After discussing the matter with the paper’s board of directors and editorial board, it was decided to issue the correction above. In addition, the Ubyssey has agreed to make a $1,000 donation to in Robert Worsley’s name to the charity of his choice. No legal action will be initiated against the paper.

Thanks, Doug!

UPDATE Sept. 30: The Ubyssey published a tongue-in-cheek editorial about the issue. An excerpt:

Finally, we regret publishing an all-satire issue of The Ubyssey without explicitly saying in the issue that it was “all-satire.” It was our assumption that students, staff, faculty and anyone else who read the issue would be able to discern the difference between our regular newspaper that appears for the rest of the year, and an issue containing ludicrous headlines such as “Umbrella police storm campus” and “Three cheers for the AMS.” This appears not to have been the case …

In printed copies of Monday’s Daily Universe, due to a spelling error in a photo caption, the word “apostles” was replaced with a different word. The Daily Universe apologizes to the Quorum of the Twelve and our readers for the error.

Not surprisingly, the mistake was a result of deadline pressure and the spell checker. That’s an all too common combination. From the article about the error:

The Daily Universe took the extraordinary step Monday of re-calling all its 18,500 copies from newsstands around campus and the community to reprint the entire 14-page issue due to a typographical error on the front page.

A spelling error appeared in a photo caption in which the word “apostle” was rendered as “apostate.” In referring to activities at the General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints last weekend, the caption read in part, “Members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostates and other general authorities raise their hands in a sustaining vote. . . .”

Once the mistake was noticed, all available copies of the newspaper were removed from the racks and replaced with a sign directing students to view the paper online, said Brad Rawlins, chair of the Department of Communications.

“We are reprinting the paper and we will have the corrected version back on the racks by mid-afternoon,” Rawlins said. “This shows the deep concern we have on the matter. We don’t think this error is glib or cute or humorous. We understand people will take offense to the error. We ourselves are offended as a department for this error. We have a deep regret that it appeared in today’s paper.”

Daryl Gibson, director of NewsNet IT, said this is the first time the paper has been pulled because of a news error in his more than 30 years of working at BYU.

The misspelling was an unintentional error, said Rich Evans, editorial manager for The Daily Universe.

“Our copy editor in charge of the front page, who was under deadline pressure, was using spell check on her page and had misspelled the word apostle,” Evans said. “One of the first options that came up on InDesign’s spell check suggestions was the word apostate. Unfortunately that’s the one she clicked on. It still should have been caught by two more levels of review after that, but again with deadline looming, the worst possible thing happened.”

In interviews Monday morning, staff at The Daily Universe explained the editorial process in which the error occurred. A student photographer who was at General Conference in Salt Lake City wrote a caption to be used with a photo-graph of several members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. The photo was then placed into the newspaper layout — accomplished in a software program called Adobe InDesign — by a student copy editor who reviewed the information along with the rest of the paper. The caption was then reviewed again by a professional staff proofreader who checks for additional mistakes. This process is often compressed into a short time due to deadline.

“There’s a million different things that the copy editor has to look for, including headlines, captions, spelling of people’s names, making sure pictures are up to the Honor Code standards and so on,” said Joshua Flake, student news editor of The Daily Universe. “Unless the photographer needs help, the reporters rarely see the caption.” …

Thanks, Ben!

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.