Plagiarism claim in Somerville
Somerville Journal to Somerville News: You plagiarized from one of our stories.
Somerville News to Somerville Journal: No we didn't. Have you no shame?
Details here.
Labels: ethics
posted by Dan Kennedy @ 8:09 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
I am unpersuaded that any plagiarism occurred here. This is not an accusation to be made lightly.
I like the response, which basically says "it's not plagiarism because it's impossible to cover these baloney community events without generating identical streams of cliches"- and how true that is, says somebody who has covered a lot of them
This has happened to me dozens of times (lazy rewrite of my articles, sometimes even with quotes lifted) over the years.
An understaffed regional daily regularly had reporters crib from the local weekly's coverage of suburbs. I never complained to anyone, because I'd rather have my competitors rehashing my articles rather than working to scoop me. But my staff was always eager to see which of our Wednesday publication stories were deemed the most worthy of cribbing for the daily's Thursday and Friday editions.
And, to be honest, local weeklies can't always get someone to federal court for days on end, and take as US attorney's press release and three daily newspaper accounts and put together a brief summary item on deadline - but usually without the nerve to take a byline.
If you do it right, it's not plagiarism, but it is *weak.*
Seems like they were cribbing, at least in terms of the general form of the article. If that's the case, it's technically plagiarism, although almost impossible to prove.
If this kind of thing is a pattern with the Somerville News, I don't blame Guha for speaking up (as long as her piece was based on actual reporting and not derived from a press release).
And I think Norton needs to worry less about possible careless use of the term plagiarism, and more about the lameness of what transpired.
Somerville has TWO newspapers? How many does Boston have? Curious. . . .
There are about eight community weekly newspapers in Boston. In total, there are about 35 newspapers including the Globe, Herald, Monitor and Phoenix. Many are targeted to specific classifications of interest - women, business, etc.
Not to mention the Banner, Courier and Dorchester Reporter.
I'm unfamiliar with the Courier -- where is it distributed?
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