Daily Pennsylvanian Orders Venti No-Foam Chai Plagiarism Latte
It's funny -- there are three newspapers generally considered to be the tops in the Ivy League: the Harvard Crimson, the Yale Daily News, and the Daily Pennsylvanian (not in that order). And with the 2006-'07 school year coming to a close, the three papers tarred by plagiarism flaps so far are the Crimson, the YDN, and now, the DP.
The DP fired columnist Jamie France '10 this weekend after her column on caffeine Friday bore uncanny similarities to a Yahoo! Food piece from March. The former ticks off facts on Diet Coke, Water Joe, Red Bull, Tab Energy, Enviga, Rocket Chocolates, Starbucks and Spike Shooter; the latter ticks off facts on Diet Coke, Water Joe, Red Bull, Tab Energy, Enviga, Rocket Chocolates, Starbucks and Spike Shooter. Five health benefits are duplicated, too. And all those things are given in the exact same order, the odds of which occurring naturally are one in (math nerds, speak up) 6,227,020,800.
We asked the DP about this on Saturday morning, and as of 5:30 p.m. the paper had France's back. "I see that there are similarities," her editor, Zoe Tillman, wrote, "but I stand by Jamie's work. ... I know that she would never intentionally plagiarize anything." EIC Shawn Safvi said: "I recognize the similarities and I know that Jamie did use that website as one of the main resources for writing her column. However, after speaking with Jamie I know that she did not intentionally plagiarize anything on that website." (Note the similar phrasing in their emails. Oh, the irony.)
But less than 24 hours later, France was canned. "While we still believe that she did complete other research to get her information, the similarities in writing style and structure are too noticeable to ignore," Tillman emailed us. "The DP does not tolerate plagiarism in any form, and we're currently discussing implementing more in-depth workshops on these issues for staff in the future."
Everything about this makes us sad. First, the DP is a great paper, and if plagiarism happens there, it must happen everywhere. Second, this is extremely unusual, but France may actually be a one-time offender; we'll be counting on you to find other examples, but in the meantime, this could just be a kid who screwed up at finals time. (France hasn't responded to an email.) Finally, and most disturbing of all, is the idea that a reader busted France by being familiar with a month-old charticle on Diet Coke on Yahoo! Food.
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April 23rd, 2007 at 10:16 am
She’s kinda hot too, shame…
These are pure facts though, it’s not like that retarded “300″ article that copied freakin’ observations and exact sentences. Still, she was a bit blonde to list the drinks in the same order.
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:45 am
Yeah she is kinda hot.
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:33 am
Silly Ivy Leaguers
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:29 pm
yea definitely a cutie.
such a shame indeed.
i mean, i’d still do her. plagiarists do it better anyway (because they steal great sex moves from porn i assume)
April 23rd, 2007 at 2:53 pm
While I do love the DP and think it’s one of the best student papers around, I have to laugh when you imply it should be above plagiarism. Ever hear of DP alum Stephen Glass?
April 23rd, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Penn alum, that wasn’t plagiarism. It was just plain making shit up — which is actually even worse. It may be a lot of things, but it wasn’t plagiarism!
April 23rd, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Yeah, Stephen Glass was a fabricist a la James Frey. Jamie France fits more into the Kaavya Viswanathan/Ian McEwan set. Get your literary scandals right, alum.
April 23rd, 2007 at 8:31 pm
The DP is still the best college newspaper. Hands down. Happy you guys caught this article- it’s unacceptable.
April 23rd, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Surely the Spectator’s better than the Daily Pennsylvanian? Annenberg institute or not.
April 23rd, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Whoooaaa, cool your jets Penn’09. Whether or not the DP is disputable (does more people working automatically make it prestigious?). What is apparant is the fact that the DP has by far the worst website out off all the Ivy papers.
April 23rd, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Something little known to those outside the DP newsroom is that there is a strong suspicion that Glass actually started his career as a fabricator at the student newspaper. There is a feature story he wrote — I think for the SP, the summer version of the paper, but I’m not totally sure — that reads very much like his later fiction-as-journalism work.
That said, the DP is the best Ivy League student newspaper, hands down. Just count the Pacemaker awards.
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:02 pm
I’m sure “DP Alum 06″ would know….. (*sarcasm)
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:40 pm
The fact that P’s criticism of my post rests on the WEBSITE of the DP only furthers my point.
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:59 pm
I don’t know about all of these claims to best paper, but in terms of best scandalous alumni at an Ivy publication, the DP wins hands down.
Nick Sylvester ain’t got shit on Stephen Glass.
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:15 pm
“Financial Aid Headline 20 pt gah gah”
April 24th, 2007 at 12:16 am
as much i was going to call out the editors for standing by an obvious case of plagarism, i’m still not sure about this one.
clearly, the source for her article is the yahoo one, and she should have cited that. however, she doesn’t copy the words from the other verbatim, but rather expands on the initial text. finally, it almost seems as if she acknowledges that she didn’t actually write the list, but is rather providing commentary on it. “8. Spike Shooter: Desperate times call for desperate measures. I’ve personally never heard of it, but any 8.4-oz .can that can house ” She admits to never having heard of the 8th item on her list in the article. Either she is stupid, or sort of realized that she wasn’t coming up with the orginal material and information.
April 24th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
@Penn ‘09: Spare us the logical fallacies. Not addressing a point does not mean it’s correct.
April 24th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
I vote she’s sort of stupid.
April 24th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
obviously you put that as a joke. The order of best ivy college papers is:
1) Crimson
2) DP and Spec, depending on the section
3) YDN
4) no comment
April 24th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
H ‘05: you’re annoying.
analyze the logic in that.
BAM.
April 25th, 2007 at 2:11 am
you are all losers. nobody liked you in high school nobody ever will. be sarcastic your whiole life until you die fuck you
April 25th, 2007 at 3:05 am
Haha:
No. The Crimson is really not very good. They are extremely pretentious and the writing is surprisingly poor. Their sports coverage is particularly pitiful. They do, however, have the best website.
The DP is clearly No. 1 overall, the Crimson is second, and the YDN is third. The Spec is fourth, but loses points for their constant copy errors and lack of creativity (many of their features are ripped off from the aforementioned three). They do clearly put in a lot of effort (especially on the sports side), but the quality just isn’t always there to back it up. And as for the others… yeah, no comment.
April 25th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
I’ve seen her up close…run!
And she’s definitely an idiot, especially as she acknowledges never having tried or heard of at least two of her items.
April 26th, 2007 at 10:06 am
What a joke, the Crim ain’t got much to be proud of. Nice web site though.
May 15th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
i hate that high schoolers think that there all bad cuase there in high school i will set there houses on fire if i see one more comment obout 8th graders this year and if you think im kidding leaveme your address you little bitch and if your a girl then you fucking cunt