Does plagiarism matter in the blogosphere?

from the 5/29/97 City Paper (citypaper.net):

Bring Out Yer Dead

That's the question being asked by the Philadelphia Inquirer's obituary department.

Inquirer correspondent Joe Hagenmayer, who works the obituary desk in the Cherry Hill bureau, says a Courier-Post editorial writer not only stole a line from one of his obits, but attributed it to someone who hadn't even beencontacted by anyone from the Courier.

The quote in question, from a Burlington County College professor, appeared in Hagenmayer's March 11 obituary for poet Geraldine Little: "She just kept going like the Energizer bunny. She almost constantly was re-inventing what she was doing.She sang; she wrote; she talked; and she taught. Her teaching was almost like a performance."

On March 20, the Courier-Post ran an editorial, "Death of a remarkable poet," which Hagenmayer describes as "a simple rewriting of basic obituary information." But the professor's quote appeared near the end, word forword.

When the Courier editorial was brought to his attention by a colleague, Hagenmayer says he called the professor, who said he hadn't been contacted by the Courier regarding Little's death. City Paper could not reach the professorbefore press time.

On May 19, Hagenmayer fired off an angry letter to Courier Executive Editor Ev Landers: "It is clear to me that the unauthorized use of my work on your editorial pages is an infringement on my copyright. Any future 'borrowing' of my workwill result in legal action."

"Frankly, if the Courier-Post had wanted to make use of my work, you had that opportunity several years ago. Furthermore, I find it embarrassing that any newspaper — much less one the size of the Courier-Post — would stoop tosomething that politicians have been criticized for on front pages and editorial pages."

Landers says he never saw the letter; he was out of town May 20-22, when it probably arrived. Editorial page Editor Bob Ingle was equally surprised that an Inquirer reporter was accusing the Courier of plagiarism.

"I think I would have remembered that," Ingle says. He recalled the editorial, but said it was against the paper's policy to reveal the author.

— Frank Lewis

Your premise, that "[p]lagiarism is a bit like pornography - you know it when you see it" has a few inherent flaws, I suspect.

In fact, Meghan O'Rourke, claimed the exact opposite was true in "The Copycat Syndrome - Plagiarists at Work" published in Slate last year. 

Said she:

"We may know pornography when we see it, but the same can't be said of plagiarism."

The fact is that most of the bloggers -- at least the ones I frequently follow -- go out of their way to use links to attribute sources, and that practice even includes the use of a "h.t.", or "hat tip" to someone that linked a source earlier.

In that sense, blogging is an entirely new form of writing, because you can link a source for a concept (or quote) right within your text, which allows a reader to read right through, and then go back to check material at the links.

To me, that is a much more accurate form of sourcing than using the old newspaper bromide, "reportedly ..."

You have no doubt noticed that newspapers do not generally use links for that purpose, especially when it comes to linking to some other paper's story on the subject.

They will instead use links for limited purposes, such as to send the reader to a short "bio," or a prior article they had published about someone (or some place) the name of which is mentioned in the text of the article.

And such links are usually irrelevant to the topic being discussed in the article.

News reporters will normally not write a story that cites an anecdote or story some other reporter has fully written about, without some form of attribution.  But the same is not always true when it comes to lifting something out of a blog.

As an example, I wrote a piece on former Senator Walter Kavanaugh when he died, and I included a funny story that had been told to me by a former colleague of his, Dick Kamin.

I published it on January 9th, and sent the link out to several press sources. On the 11th, Tom Hester published a piece in the Star-Ledger telling the exact same story, but with no attribution or link to my earlier version.

Now, he didn't use the same exact words. But if the situation had been reversed, I would have linked to his story out of courtesy.

by Trochilus

I agree with the above commenters. We need to distinguish between non-attribution of content and research, and flat-out plagiarism.

He used the same exact phrasing!! That's inexcusable.