Copy and Paste: the Yale Daily News Version of the Great College Newspaper Plagiarism Dance
Places, everyone, places! It's time for another college newspaper plagiarism flap, and we've rehearsed this so many times that by now everyone should be off-book. As it were. In tonight's episode, Yale Daily News byline factory Makda Asrat '09 is charged with ripping off a recent Slate review of the movie "300."
Scene I: The Ritual Comparing of Passages. From Slate's Dana Stevens:
[N]o one involved ... seems to have noticed that we're in the middle of an actual war. With actual Persians (or at least denizens of that vast swath of land once occupied by the Persian empire).
And from Asrat's YDN piece:
[N]o one involved in the making of "300" noticed that we are in the middle of an actual war with actual Persians (or at least inhabitants of the lands the that [sic] Persian Empire once encompassed).
Rather incriminating, we'd say. Cue Scene II: The Scupulously Parsed Editor's Note. The YDN posted a correction this afternoon noting that Asrat had read the Slate piece prior to writing her own, and that a single sentence had been "inadvertantly [sic] replicated"; an investigation into her previous work is underway. To plagiarize ourselves: you just know the Romenesko-horny YDN reporters smell blood in the water.
That means it's time for Scene III: More Transgressions Come To Light. We'll stick to the same piece. From Slate:
Here are just a few of the categories that are not-so-vaguely conflated with the "bad" (i.e., Persian) side in the movie: black people. Brown people. Disfigured people. Gay men (not gay in the buff, homoerotic Spartan fashion, but in the effeminate Persian style). Lesbians. Disfigured lesbians. Ten-foot-tall giants with filed teeth and lobster claws. Elephants and rhinos (filthy creatures both).
And from the YDN:
Even more problematic are the different groups the film conflates with the Persians (and thereby Evil): black people, brown people, East Asian people, disfigured people, gay men, promiscuous lesbians, giants, monsters with lobster claws and curiously violent elephants and rhinos all stand in, at one point or another, for the Eastern antithesis of the Spartan soldier.
There are other similarities, like "color-processed to a burnished, monochromatic copper" vs. "burnished to a monochromatic bronze," but refereeing them all would require more effort than we can muster. Suffice it to say the YDN piece gives the impression of someone who not just borrowed, but tried to cover up the borrowing with a few artless keystrokes of the ol' Shift F7. Stay tuned, copycat fans;whether Asrat turns out a weapons-grade Kaavya or a venal-sin Victoria, we're sure there's more of this to come.
(Asrat, YDN editor Sarah Mishkin, and Slate critic Dana Stevens haven't yet answered our emails. Disclosure: Half of us works for Slate.)
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April 3rd, 2007 at 9:16 pm
How sad do you need to be to plagerize a 300 review?
April 3rd, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Scupulously
not scrupulous enough, guys
April 3rd, 2007 at 10:32 pm
It was a fantastic review. The Slate one, and also its republication in the YDN.
April 4th, 2007 at 6:00 am
How many times is this gonna happen before people realize that somewhere along the line they’re gonna be caught?
April 4th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Yeah, totally retarded, glad I didnt go to yale.
April 4th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
What’s great about movies like 300 is that they’re so bad they almost review themselves. Totally inexcusable to plagiarize, especially when it’s so easy to be original.
April 4th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
plagiarizing on school assignments is dumb. Plagiarizing in a paper that you know has a readership of 200,000+ is just appallingly retarded. WTF?!? I’d rather hand in a massively half-assed, shittily written review than something thats so clearly stolen.
On the other hand, maybe plagiarism in college newspapers is the new “accidentally leaked” celebrity sextape … heres your (really lame, no one really cares) 15 minutes Makda
April 4th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Is that the same Makda Asrat who who was nominated as a “Multicultural Citizens of Distinction” Orange County NAACP’s 60th anniversary celebration?
April 4th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Is that the same Makda Asrat who who was nominated as a “Multicultural Citizens of Distinction” at the Orange County NAACP’s 60th anniversary celebration?
April 4th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Is that the same Makda Asrat who who was nominated as a “Multicultural Citizen of Distinction” at the Orange County NAACP’s 60th anniversary celebration?
April 4th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
OK, it wasn’t my fault that the comment posted three times, or that during the eternity it took each to post to send I found a reason to edit. But now you get the see the editorial work product in progression.
April 4th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Is that the same Makda Asrat who who was nominated as a “Multicultural Citizen of Distinction” at the Orange County NAACP’s 60th anniversary celebration?
April 4th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
Don’t they have spell check at Yale?
April 4th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
200,000 circulation for the YDN? That’s almost twice the entire population of New Haven, and over twice the number of all living alumni of Yale College. Most metropolitan dailies would kill for that kind of circulation.
April 5th, 2007 at 9:50 am
I think he meant SLATE has 200,000.
April 6th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
She’s been fired. Turns out this was kind of a regular thing. This includes a list of compared passages: http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/20591
(Who the heck plagiarizes Entertainment Weekly?)
April 6th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
update, you’re a bitch
December 15th, 2007 at 6:41 am
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce