Student sportswriter fired for plagiarism

The editor that had SportsJournalists.com Masturbation Nation ready to turn this topic into another hot-girl thread? That editor? I'm just making sure I get it clear in my mind before I comment on the "power" she wields.

I know the paper, the kid that was fired and the paper's faculty adviser, a former colleague of mine. She -- yes, the adviser is a woman; sorry, kitten-killers, no pictures here -- advises a paper that discovered one of its columnists was plagiarizing in 2006 (a fact anyone who read the editor's piece could clearly see). Two incidents in two years means a bigger credibility hit than a first-time problem, so the paper couldn't sweep it under the rug. Nor should it have.

There are consequences for plagiarism even in college, even for a student caught turning in a term paper he or she lifted off the internet. The Daily Reveille handled this as professionally and appropriately, in my opinion.

 

Plus, letting them off easy might give them the wrong impression.

 

I came across a situation like this at my college paper. Desk discovered that one of our news reporters had plagiarized a story that had appeared in our city's major metro paper a few days before. Caught that one before it ran, then did a little research and discovered that she had plagiarized several other stories as well that did run. When confronted, the reporter quit.

However, I was very angry with the way my paper handled it. They wrote a vague editorial a couple days later that mainly discussed plagiarism as an issue and briefly mentioned the incident, saying something like "a Daily reporter recently plagiarized a story and is no longer with the paper."

For whatever reason, our EIC and ME decided that we should not name the reporter. Why not? My argument was, if we are willing to put other people's names in the paper when they steal, cheat, or whatever, why are we making an exception when it's one of our own? Very hypocritical, in my opinion. If it's our job to call out people when they mess up, that goes for ourselves too.

Good job by the Reveille.

 

man, college newspaper

through a complete pre-internet fluke, i caught a columnist who stole like nine graphs out of a story in a metro 200 miles away

he claimed it was a "typo"

i immediately fired him - he probably made $20 a story - and he freaking SUED ME

hahaha

what a loser

 

Well-played by The Daily Reveille. Had a similar situation at my college paper. The writer was just being lazy and took results off a Web site. The problem? The results he took were three years old. Stupidly, it got past our editors and ran.

What annoyed me most was, the kid that did it still found a good internship and, I think, landed at a decent shop out of college.

Is college-paper plagiarism just looked at as kids being kids?

 

right on.
why is it, when plagiarism comes up, everybody becomes draconian? and self-righteous.
off with their heads!
where is the compassion..
why couldn't they give the kid a break...a reprimand...a suspension...work with him...give him counsel and encouragement
how many athletes get second chances when they fuck up? all of them. every single last one one gets two or three or four chances.
everybody in society gets two or three chances.

except a student reporter.
he is beheaded - capital punishment - at the first mistake.

something about "plagiarism" makes people in the busines just whacko.

 

There are far too many qualified individuals and not nearly enough quality jobs to let fuckheads that steal just get away with it.

 

Baseball = Don't gamble on baseball.
Journalism = Don't plagiarise.

 

I'm an editor (not EIC) at my college paper. We might all be "just in college," but we hold ourselves to the same standards as professional papers, and we beat local professional papers at many stories.

I know for a fact that a similar column would run by our EIC had the situation been on our campus. Probably would have been stronger.

 

My only problem with the column was mentioning the plagiarism of other newspapers. Don't distract the reader by talking about what other papers have done. It should be about your paper and what your writer did.

We had a writer plagiarize a brief from the school's athletic department web site when I was the editor at my college paper. I had a rare night off when we got a call from the intern in the sports info department telling us that he wrote it. My managing editor called the writer into the office and fired him before talking to me about it, which really pissed me off. I would have fired him, obviously, but I felt it was my responsibility to be the one do it.

There is no room for plagiarism at any level, but I think the reason it's looked upon a bit more lightly at the college level is that kids are often juggling classwork and another job along with their newspaper responsibilities. I'm not saying that makes it right, but I can understand the temptation when you have 25-page paper due in a few days and need to pull a night shift at the local coffee house just to stay in school.

 

At my college paper we caught repoters plagarizing every year. We quickly fired them. And that was that. No need to write a column about it. It's not news. Must have been a slow newsday.

 

MLB cut pete rose slack for years. it bent over to keep him in the game, until his chronic gambling couldn't be ignored.

get the point? rose was cut slack for years and many suspected incidents.

and you want to fire a student, and hang him out to dry publicly, for one fucking mistake.

where is the compassion? and perspective?
why does plagiarism make normal people behave like the 14th century catholic church in spain?
why does it make normal people sound like self-righteous morality police?
get off it already.