Interesting plagiarism case

I skimmed over the first post on this thread and saw "high school" and assumed the writer was stealing from a prep reporter. Then I read a few more and realized the guy stole from a high school newspaper. Wow.

 

I worked at a Boone newspaper once and the ME would look at the big metro daily and do what she called "creative rewriting" of their stories for our weekly paper. It struck me as wrong and lazy, both. BTW, MilanWall if you're reading this, you work for the ME in question. [blue] You're learning from a pro[/blue]

 

It's so stupid it is as if he wanted to get caught.

The whole thing makes me very angry. First, why the hell did he get into this business if he's going to be so lazy that he has to lift somebody else's work? Does he take no pride in his work? Second, the general public sees this and it diminishes our business, particularly sports journalists.

I honestly think this guy must have some sort of mental disorder to even think he could try this and pull it off. Like I said in the first sentence of this post: It's as if he wanted to get caught.

 

That letter is pretty interesting, does anyone else wonder what the school board is referring to by "latest example of journalistic irresponsibility?" Sounds like this newspaper didn't already have the greatest rep with the letter writers to begin with.

 

People are always gonna knock the local paper, even if the paper is good, so I didn't put a whole lot of meaning into that.

 

I’ve had my work taken before. It was on a story that no one in my field was writing about (but now almost every one has at least mentioned it). Being a rookie, I was really excited about putting this story out there first. I mean it wasn’t the news of the century, but it’s something that is still mentioned almost every week by someone.

Anyway, there were several people involved, so it took me days to contact all of them. Overall, I spent several hours on the phone personally speaking with them to get good personal quotes for the story.

By the time I finally finished the article I was like, ‘Whew! I can’t believe I’ve put so much time into this.’ (Especially since I wasn’t even getting paid for it)

My editor was ‘really excited’ about it for me too. But not too excited, three weeks later he still hadn’t ran the story. That is until one day….

I got online one morning and checked a particular site when lo and behold I see a breaking news story that was even re-used on another major website within the industry.

This story was pretty much the exact same as mine. Every one of my personal quotes that I spent hours and hours throughout several days collecting were there. The wording of the storyline had somewhat been changed but there wasn’t a single ounce of new information that I didn’t have in mine. The story followed the same line.

My editor had taken my work changed just some of the writing and called it his own (without ever running my story of course). He got all the credit for originally bringing this story to the industry.

Never once did he think of me and all my hard work…well not until I flipped out over it to him anyway. But even then it didn’t matter, the credit was his and his alone. And what really irks me is when I originally proposed the idea of this story to him he acted like it was lame and wouldn’t be much of a newsworthy story but if I wanted to do it I could.

 

Editors like that give the entire industry a black eye.

 

I'd still like to give him a black eye.

 

Maybe so ... but snapping my neck is just taking it too far.

 

Thanks for saying it. I didn't too much like the letter either. Especially this part:

The quotes, when put falsely in the mouths of our local students, made them appear to be cheaters and poor sports, and have devastated the families involved.

My first thought was "Devastated? Shut the fuck up with your indignation."

 

i can top that. try the publisher plagiarizing in a column. and keeping his position with his "punishment" being apologizing in his next column (which actually read more like an excuse than an apology) and fessing up to the editorial staff.