What's the easiest way for a journalist to lose his job? Plagiarism. Every writer, whether they are a third-grader doing a book report, or a professional journalist, knows that you do not take someone else's writing and pass it off as your own. If you want to use someone else's writing, you must first cite the source.
Apparently, Boston Globe football writer Ron Borges never got that memo. He was recently caught trying to use someone else's writing and pass it off as his own. Usually, every Sunday, Borges bylines a "Football Notes" column that runs in the sports section of the Globe. This column is a compilation of miscellaneous information gathered pertaining to the National Football League. In his Mar. 4 column, he was found by the Web site coldhardfootballfacts.com to have used a previously published article by sportswriter Mike Sando of the News Tribune of Tacoma, Wash.
If you were to look at the Borges column and the Sando article side-by-side, they are the published word-for-word with no differences. This is a clear violation of the unwritten Golden Rule of Journalism that no journalist, under any circumstances, will use another journalist's writing word-for-word without crediting the source.
Now, before you decide that Borges is a thief and should be fired from the Globe, let's hear the other side of the story. At the end of every Sunday notes column that is published in the Globe sports section, there is a disclaimer that states, "material from personal interviews, wire services, other beat writers, and league and team sources was used in this report." Does this get Borges off the hook? Absolutely not.
The disclaimer means he used someone else's information and did not do his own reporting. That does not give him any reason to basically copy and paste Sando's writing into his column. Another piece of important information: according to Globe sports editor Joe Sullivan, Borges belongs to a group of national football writers who subscribe to a community notes system where these writers gather and share information online the other writers can use in their Sunday notes columns. Borges's defense is that he was simply using the information provided to him and he was unaware the article was already published on Feb. 25. Does this get Borges off the hook? No. This sounds more like a cop-out to me.
Now, let's make it clear that I do not know Ron Borges as a person and probably will never know Ron Borges as a person. He has written some cynical columns about my beloved New England Patriots in the past, but as a journalist, he has the privilege to do that. This has nothing to do with my feelings on his recent journalistic wrongdoings. I personally think the man should lose his job, but who am I? I am just a young, na've columnist at a college newspaper. So let's hear what some professional sportswriters have to say:
"For years, when I primarily covered college basketball and football for the Los Angeles Times, I never used community notes packages," said Espn.com columnist Gene Wojiechowski in an e-mail. "I did my own reporting, rather than use pool material gathered by other writers around the country. And if I did use information from another writer, I always attributed it to that paper, that writer, or both. I'm not saying using pool information is right or wrong. I'm simply saying that by doing my own reporting for the entire notes package, I never had to worry about the information's authenticity, the context of the quotes, or having another writer or newspaper question where I got the material."
Former Sports Illustrated senior writer Jeff Pearlman wrote in an e-mail, "I honestly don't know enough about the specific [Borges] charges to elaborate. But if he intentionally lifted stuff and tried to pass it as his own, and I'm not saying he did, he - or any writer - should be fired."
As you can see, I am not the only one who stays away from plagiarism. Luckily for Borges, as far as we know, this is his first offense of plagiarism, so he will probably keep his job. He is currently on a well-deserved two-month suspension without pay from the Globe. However, if in the next two months, the editors at the Globe find that he has plagiarized before, we will probably find Mr. Borges as a fulltime host on a sports radio program soon.
There is no justifiable reason why Ron Borges did what he did. It was out of pure laziness that he copied and pasted Sando's article into his column, and that is just unacceptable. In this age of the Internet we live in, it has become so easy to plagiarize something, whether it is a newspaper article or a book report. With just a click of a mouse and typing a few words into Google, anyone can find anything they need online. Often, an editor or a professor will not go through a strenuous Internet search to find if you took the material word-for-word from a Web site.
I am not denouncing his use of the notes sharing system Borges uses, but he should have changed the words around to make it his own. As a writer, it's your job and your duty to have a level of integrity; everything you put your name on should be your own. You should never take someone else's work and expect to get away with it. As Dave Kindred, a columnist for The Sporting News, once wrote to me in an e-mail, "You do your reporting, thinking, and writing in portions according to the time you have. It's called being professional."
SYLVESTER OFORI-PARKU, GHANA