Plagiarism is bad enough, but plagiarizing in this age of Google searches strikes me as more than slightly self- destructive. Today’s report that some sports writer for the Boston Globe plagiarized another writer in Tacoma WA was a particular heads scratcher. Even more bizarre is that the Globe only suspended the guy for two months. What disrespect for its readers (and for other writers). In other words, it’s okay with the Globe if we, their readers, think plagiarism is a tiny offense, meriting just a brief time out. No wonder their newspaper is in so much trouble. What absurdly low standards.
This is the Boston Globe we’re talking about. The paper that bought Mike Royko’s syndication rights so nobody would know Barnicle was plagurisimg him. Barnicle was only fired after the Globe fired Particia Smith, a African-American columnist who was accused of fabricating stories. (Something Barnicle did too…)
Wolfie’s right: it’s the Globe, who are looking across the street at the Herald and saying, “Mommy! Make them stop!”
While they hemmorage like a hemophiliac.
One of the Globe sports writers has an explanation, which was emailed to the wonderful sports site Deadspin, which has been covering it all. (mainly because they think Borges is a schmuck, which he is.) Suffice it to say, Dean Barnett, Bill Belichick and I are all enjoying this story immensely.
More at http://tags.deadspin.com/sports/ron-borges/
When I teach at the University of Texas-Pan American (Department of Rehabilitation Services) I always tell my students that plagerism will earn them a zero for the paper and an F for the course. I almost always catch one or two merely by Googling a phrase that doesn’t seem to be written in the same style. Perhaps those folk have gone on to be reporters.
Hmmm. I wonder how hard it would be to write a tool that automatically browsed the news sites each day and googled various phrases from the stories, looking for plagerism.
It would take a human to really check, of course, but I’ll bet an automated tool could turn up a number of leads each day. Checking the leads could even be farmed out to a web-bassed community.
Call it “Plagiarism Watch”. The domain seems to be free…
The reason this is interesting is that at the end of the article is a disclaimers saying that parts are supplied etc. Borges is a huge Belichick hater so most of the Patriot fans are just eating this up. Also, according to WEEI Borges has a labor case against the Globe that is years old. Some interesting things may shake out of the Globe over the next two months.