Ron Borges - Plagiarist?

That's fair, Fen. I'm just not buying the idea that a long career makes it more acceptable, which is not a view you have espoused.

 

Read the next sentence, Bruce. "Two months unpaid seems about right."
That's not a slap on the wrist. That's publicly embarrassed and out probably tens of thousands of dollars. If this is his first offense, that seems reasonable.
It's not acceptable at any stage of a career. But, if I'm a manager, I'm willing to cut a little slack and suspend instead of fire, especially if I think the sin is one of laziness, not of Jayson Blair-style duplicity.
My comment about experience was meant to say one should weigh both the good and the bad when dealing with a man's career, and, on thinking about it some more, I'd cut a rookie some slack, too, if I felt he'd never do it again.

 

I'll throw this out there:

What if it wasn't out of laziness, or duplicity?

What if he had so much on his plate that he was scrambling, did the best he could to rework a few notes, and realized after the fact that he hadn't done as good of a job as he had thought?

Not saying that was the case in this situation: but as newspapers continually ask their writers to do more with less, will stuff like this become more common?

 

Usually when somebody is found as a plagiarist, it isn't one example. When they go back and check on stories, other examples are found.

If that is not the case here, then perhaps a two-month suspension would be right. Another factor might be that somebody read something and it stuck in their head. It might also have to do with what Borges would bring to the table - that his expertese might be difficult to replace.

All that said, I never could understand why anybody would do that. I have always thought that I could write better than anybody else, and if I found that my copy was the same as someone else, I probably would rewrite it in the belief that I could do better.

 

I must say I love this logic. It's like the Isiah Thomas line of reasoning. Just switch "they shouldn't have been on the court" to "Sando should have written a better article."

 

Not to interrupt the inane bickering, but to bring up a journalism related issue: imagine if this had been during the season. How would the Globe go about replacing it's top football columnist during the season? I could be wrong, but didn't Barnacle get a two-month suspension initially and then get canned once it was discovered that he had done other things (I know little about his situation clearly). I wouldn't automatically assume Borges is out of the woods yet, especially with a few things already seeming to come up. Let's just say my clips packet is ready to go!

Another topic: is it time for these colossal Sunday notebooks to go? Are they really as meaningful now that there are so many sites and information is so much easier to obtain for readers? It seems to me that it's just giving writers a lot of work that is unnecessary and I can see how it would lead to someone being lazy and, while not plagiarizing, not doing as thorough a job of reporting.

 

Take your lips off.... one at a time.... and no one will get hurt.

 

And, this is the rationale that will get Barry Bonds into the Hall.

 

Barry hardly seems to be a one-time offender. And even if he was, there's a bit of difference between going to the Hall of Fame and keeping your job.
As I said, if they find more instances of this, then, yes, I'd join the chorus calling for Borges' head on a spear. Until then, two months unpaid suspension seems appropriate to me. That's all.
And Boobie, come on, inane bickering's what we do best here.

 

This made me laugh my ass off... From Pro Football Talk...

 

I don't know about that... I know a very prominent African-American writer who got a one-month suspension for a very similar fuck-up...

No, it's not Whitlock...

 

I think the mildly obsessive fans get all the info they need from the web, but there's still a bunch of people out there who are less intense fans. For those folks, a notes package works. But just give full credit to the original writer and media outlet -- it's not like you have to prove to your readers that you're this omniscient analyst with sources around the globe.