The Cornell Sun’s Paraphrasing Problem
The Cornell Sun, arbiter of Fine Journalism, subject of famous documentaries, and in the words of one of its former editors, “one of the best newspapers in the Ivy League” (i.e. “better than the Daily Princetonian”), has a bit of a paraphrasing problem: the September 25 issue contained two articles directly cribbed from Inside Higher Education.
On August 31, Inside Higher Education featured an article entitled “Jon Stewart, Oral Exams and More,” about new, “innovative” ways that a certain Professor Ryan Lee Teten has reached his students.
In a September 25 article, “Jon Stewart Book Aids Professors: Students find comedy increases interest in government,” the Sun relates more or less the exact same story about new, “innovative” ways a certain Professor Ryan Lee Teten has reached his students.
IHE: “He also wanted to consider whether the book would provide a good introduction to the key topics an intro course should cover, and whether it would encourage critical thinking.”
SUN: “He felt it offered a solid introduction to American government and encouraged critical thinking.”
IHE: “If you compare the table of contents of America the Book with those of traditional texts, Teten noted that they cover much of the same ground, with chapters on the presidency, Congress, the courts, the media, the world outside the United States, and so forth.”
SUN: “In comparing the content of America to standard introductory political science texts, Teten noticed that much of the same material was covered, such as the presidency, Congress and foreign policy.”
IHE: “First, he said that a review he did of America the Book convinced him that it was 90 percent true, with the rest satire.”
SUN: “Teten said that his research on the book indicated that 90 percent of the content was factual and that the remaining 10 percent was satirical.”
After the jump: more of the Sun’s creepy journalistic practice of paraphrasing and localizing boring stories from Inside Higher Education.
In a somewhat belated disclaimer, the Sun article admits – in the penultimate paragraph! – that Teten relayed at least one piece of information to IHE before it reached Ithaca:
“Teten told Inside Higher Education that he considered it important both to excite some students enough about political science to become majors, but he also wanted to reach other students by teaching them how to think about world events without being intimidated by the news.”
Still, the paraphrasing problems persist. Back to IHE: “Teten said that he considered it important both to excite some students enough about political science to become majors, but he also wanted to reach other students, to teach them how to think about what’s going on in the world and not to be intimidated by the news.”
Strike Two: in a September 14 piece called “Facelifts for the Facebook Generation” IHE reported that many colleges have recently updated their homepages to correspond with the technological neediness of today’s tween applicants:
The Cornell Sun’s equivalent September 25th article, “Colleges Mimic Networking Sites to Entice Students,” is about similar technological efforts in Ithaca. This story features the same format – a broad introduction about other colleges, a more specific emphasis on blogs and multimedia, followed by interviews with university-supported bloggers themselves – as the IHE story, which the Sun does not mention. Both reporters quote Stephen Lewis, the “treasurer of a group of Web professionals in higher education called HighEdWeb,” though one of them obviously spoke to him first.
IHE: “One way universities have found to more directly reach applicants is to find current students to blog about their lives on campus.”
SUN: “One goal for this year is to increase communication between bloggers and prospective students.
When asked about the fact that his newspaper “localized” – and without attribution – two stories from IHE in the same issue, Sun EIC Johnny Lieberman was understandably terse: “We are looking into this matter and handling it internally.”
We get you, Johnny.
Sometimes you’re in Ithaca and it’s September 24 and like, nothing is happening. Nothing at all. You have four sex/relationship columnists on staff to fill up space but still, nothing. Columbia is such an attention-whore with this Iranian nonsense and look there’s bwog and The Spec and they’re totally going to get like Pulitzers for this crap and you’re stuck milling around and writing about something going on in New York City and wondering how you’re ever going to fulfill your holy journalistic duty to put out a newspaper every day no matter how little news there actually is.
Remember: it’s not plagiarism if you paraphrase.
