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.
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September 27th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
awwww, your stories are never boring, guessman.
September 27th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Yawn…….Boring story and very boringly blogged. I say, “Live as to die tomorrow, learn as to live for ever”. Well, paraphrased and therefore not plagiarized, from Isidore of Seville, 630 AD (not that any of you would know anyway and would suit me for it….. but just coming clean)
September 27th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
we dont have 4 sex/relationship columnists… where do you get this stuff? did you seriously email jonny about this? the boy has shit to do. leave him alone.
September 27th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Seriously, is there some way we can stop Brown freshmen from posting on ivygate? You’re embarassing the rest of us.
September 27th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
“Brown 2011: representing Brown as Cornell does the Ivy League”
September 27th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
The Daily Sun is a terrible newspaper
September 27th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
You all must be kidding. The Sun articles you cite are almost completely different from the IHE article you allege they plagiarize from. Both topics are of general interest to the Cornell Community and The Sun’s coverage was based here in Ithaca, where we actually care about it. I see this Sun hate fest has continued from the last bunch of “editors” that ran this place before; good to know that I can safely ignore you guys for another year until you drop out as well.
September 27th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
The Sun articles are different from the IHE article. Both are of interest to Ithaca, which we (from Ithaca) care about it. Last editors hate the Sun, Ithaca, God and Puppies and heart I’m A Dinner Jacket.
September 27th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
So IvyGate runs with a tip e-mail forward from an embittered Sun alum, who cribbed the information from another source, who intended it to remain privately disseminated, about how the Sun cribs story ideas and sources, about topics that have been written about again and again.
In one, inside Higher Ed is given a nod (inartfully, yes, but that’s not exactly how I’d go about hiding plagiarism), and the other has been written about many, many times by many, many sources (including The Sun!). The two quoted sentences DON’T EVEN SAY THE SAME THING.
Sorry, but this post kind of jumps the shark (Happy Anniversary!).
September 27th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Overall similarity of the articles be damned; the similarity of these sentences is not OK. However, Johnny is doing the right thing: protecting the identities of those involved while investigating. To ream him for that or for the yet-unknown result of an investigation is lame and petty.
‘New Class Motto’: “Does” is not correct. Given the poor grammar used by Brunonians, here you go: Brown 2011 represents Brown as Brown represents the Ivy League. (Shittily)
September 27th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Hey kettle(s), it’s interesting that this is plagiarism, and yet when Lena Chen asked for attribution, you responded by calling her a slut. There is a fine line between amusing, facetious blogging that good humoredly targets its subject(s), and bitchy defensiveness. Why do you guys always seem so defensive/pissed off all the time? Also, why attack the sun constantly? I know, I know, we’re supposed to be the dumb kids you attack all the time to feel smarter, etc. etc., and we do mess up (the yearbook gaff last year as a great example), but what about all the bad editing and crappy, boring, repetitive writing (also at the Daily Princetonian, btw)? Get off your high horses; you sound like Brown’11.
On another note: Mike, we miss you.
September 27th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
i think this is the first time jacob and hal have been accused of having the slightest liking for the daily princetonian. what was hal’s ragtime line about the prince the other day… “Does this newspaper have any editorial standards at all, or do they just print whatever they find on library computers?”
September 27th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
So, after reading this blog for the past few weeks, here’s what I’ve come up with:
Blog post: Blah blah blah blah some rich white boy/Cornell is stupid. Let’s throw rocks at them.
Comments:
All other ivies: Yeah! Cornell is stupid and sucks! We’re so cool!
Cornell: Stop being elitists! We’re smart too! You smell!
Some freshman: Blah blah blah blah blah unrelated pretentious quote, I’m smarter than you.
Seriously… does the conversation ever change with y’all? I’m bored.
September 27th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
So, after reading this blog for the past few weeks, here’s what I’ve come up with:
Blog post: Blah blah blah blah some rich white boy/Cornell is stupid. Let’s throw rocks at them.
Comments:
All other ivies: Yeah! Cornell is stupid and sucks! We’re so cool!
Cornell: Stop being elitists! We’re smart too! You smell!
Some freshman: Blah blah blah blah blah unrelated pretentious quote, I’m smarter than you.
Seriously… does the conversation ever change with y’all? I’m bored.
September 27th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
JONNY LIEBERMAN IS SO HOT
September 27th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
You could at least spell JONNY LIEBERMAN correctly.
http://cornellsun.com/about
September 27th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
You could at least spell JONNY LIEBERMAN correctly.
http://cornellsun.com/about
September 27th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
Stanford, stop reading our blog.
September 28th, 2007 at 9:22 am
Dear Lynah Faithful,
Fuck off.
Sincerely,
Brown.
September 28th, 2007 at 11:21 am
The Sun is a very low quality paper. I’m surprised that you didn’t cover President Skorton’s admonition of the paper’s lack of balance between “hard news” and opinion that ran earlier this week.
The paper needs to enhance the quality of its writing, editorial direction, and proofreading.
September 28th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
you sound smart (for a brownie)