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

By: g

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:45:41 +0000

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).

By: B'08

B'08 — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:10:42 +0000

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.

By: P'07

P'07 — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:50:38 +0000

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.

By: zooey

zooey — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 13:25:19 +0000

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?

By: Brunonian Gasp

Brunonian Gasp — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 06:27:09 +0000

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.

By: y11

y11 — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 06:18:39 +0000

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.