The Brown Daily Herald: All the News That’s Fit to Plagiarize

by Jacob Savage | February 10, 2008 at 11:33 pm

The Brown Daily Herald: All the News That's Fit to PlagiarizeThe BDH’s modus operandi is sort of up in the air these days: what’s a newspaper to do when it discovers that three plagiarists in the last three months have infested its pages? On Friday a veritable scandal erupted, as two “student journalists” stand accused of stealing sources and ideas from the Yale Daily News and the Harvard Crimson. And for what? The glory?

From Friday’s BDH:

Last week, as part of its usual fact-checking process, The Herald discovered that two news articles scheduled for publication contained material taken from other sources’ reporting without quotation or attribution. The articles were never printed. The Herald began a thorough review of the writers’ published work, as it does whenever inauthentic content is found.

During that review, two published articles were found that contained passages similar or identical to those in other publications. “Common App now has rival in Universal App,” (Sept. 26, 2007) contains text similar or identical to writing in an article in the Yale Daily News (“Common App faces new online rival,” Sept. 7, 2007). The article also contains information from an interview not attributed to the News’ reporting.

“James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA structure, resigns after racist remarks,” (Oct. 31, 2007) contained quotations not attributed to reporting for an article in the Harvard Crimson (“Watson Apologizes Amid Uproar Over His Comments on Race,” Oct. 19, 2007).”

This follows up on Zac Townsend’s winning BDH plagiarist-of-the-year award in November. And this scandal from 2006. Which leads us to the million dollar question: what exactly is the BDH’s “usual fact-checking process”? And why don’t these students-plagiarists take the truly easy way out: never volunteering to write for their college dailies to begin with?

After the jump: the not-so-startling similarities between the articles.

YDN: The Common Application is an exclusive club,” Reiter said. “There is a desire for more diversity in both the membership and applicant pool … The requirement for an essay or teacher recommendation should not limit a school’s eligibility to use an application service.”

BDH: Reiter put together an advisory committee made up of high school and college advisors, who asked for “something better” to attract “more diversity in applicants,” Reiter said.

YDN: The Common Application faces new competition this year from the Universal College Application, which was created by the same company that originally put the widely used Common Application online.

BDH: The Common Application has a new rival this year in the Universal College Application, created by the same company that put the Common Application online.

YDN: Many large public universities do not require essays and teacher recommendations, which keeps them from using the Common Application.

BDH: Many large public universities do not require essays and teacher recommendations, which prevents them from using the Common Application.

And then there are unattributed quotes taken from the Crimson. But we won’t bore you any longer.

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6 Responses to “The Brown Daily Herald: All the News That’s Fit to Plagiarize”

  1. y11 Says:
    February 11th, 2008 at 2:18 am

    Your Yale article link goes to the Brown article.

    I’m friends with the guy who wrote the Yale article. It’ll be interesting to see what he thinks about all of this.

  2. Brunonian Gasp Says:
    February 11th, 2008 at 2:27 am

    who gives a fuck? It is all the same shit. Obama wins in Maine! There is only one way to report that, whether in shitty New Haven or in glorious Providence.

  3. zooey Says:
    February 11th, 2008 at 9:25 am

    Those are rather iffy plagiarisms to me – I mean, “Many large public universities do not require essays and teacher recommendations, which keeps them from using the Common Application” seems like a sentence which a lot of people would construct. So is it plagiarism or did Yale just call dibs?

  4. P'07 Says:
    February 11th, 2008 at 12:50 pm

    This seems closer to shitty reporting — and poor training — than plagiarism to me. Basically, it seems like a lazy reporter used the YDN as a major piece of research for his article, but didn’t intend to actually copy it. As other commenters have said, there are only so many ways to phrase this information.

    As for the lifted quotes, again, I’m not sure if “plagiarism” qualifies. Awful, lazy journalistic practice, yes. But I think that failing to attribute a couple of small quote fragments falls more under the category of “faux pas” than “plagiarism.” My guess is that the fault here lies with the editors, for not properly training their reporters that this is not appropriate reporting.

  5. B'08 Says:
    February 11th, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    P’07 — you’ve graduated. Move on.

    Also, I’m not sure how stealing someone else’s writing is plagiarism, but stealing someone else’s quotes is only faux pas. Seems to me a distinction without a difference.

  6. g Says:
    February 11th, 2008 at 1:45 pm

    Stealing quotes is in my opinion worse than copying writing. The first reporter went to the trouble of interviewing people, then the second reporter implied that he/she did while just stealing credit for the other’s work. The quotes weren’t fragments, they were considerable (and one was taken out of context).