The Internet has created a lot of change in journalism, but its ethics are as important as ever. That’s why The Massachusetts Daily Collegian is disappointed and embarrassed to report that multiple instances of plagiarism made their way onto our Editorial/Opinion page this semester.
A Tuesday, April 13 column entitled “Free-range, not bacteria-free,” which was written by former Collegian columnist Nicole Sobel, was revealed to have plagiarized much of its content from a New York Times editorial, “Free-Range Trichinosis” by James E. McWilliams, verbatim. By Tuesday, this instance of plagiarism was brought to the attention of Collegian editors, not by our own staff but by comments on the story on DailyCollegian.com, which pointed to the original column on the Times’ website and to a blog entry on the NYTPicker, a New York Times watchdog and commentary blog.
Such is the democratization of news, thanks to the Internet: Often our readers can do just as good a job – if not better – of fact-checking as we can. There are a lot more of you than there are of us, after all.
In a statement to the NYTPicker, Sobel wrote, “I have written wonderful things in the past, and am completely capable of it, this is the first time [I]'ve ever done anything like this and I apologize to the Daily Collegian for my mistake, and to the original columnist from the NY times … ”
We find this statement to be misleading as well, because further comments from readers encouraged us to scrutinize Sobel’s other columns, and what we found was a trend in a more veiled form of plagiarism – the theft of ideas, rather than word-for-word quotes, without attribution. At least three other columns bearing her name were alarmingly similar to columns published within a week’s time in The Times. Why someone would expect to get away with plagiarizing the international newspaper of record is beyond us. Why they managed to get by our editing staff is a serious cause for concern.
Editor’s notes, with proper attribution, have been appended to all of the columns in question, and The Collegian is investigating the matter further to give credit where it is due.
The Collegian offers no excuses for what happened, because there are none. We won’t promise that it won’t happen again, because none of us (hopefully) will be here in four years. We can only offer assurances that we’ve retooled our fact-checking process to be more vigilant about plagiarism in the future.
But we would like to use this opportunity to highlight the power our readership has over how our organization is run. Letters to the editor, comments and the fact that anyone can make a blogger account and link back to us are all evidence that we do not have the final say on our how stories are received. You do.
So to those who made us look bad by catching our mistakes before we did: Thank you. You’ve done a service to the community and to The Collegian. As we focus more of our efforts to produce a quality product – in print and online – we need your help more than ever.
Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion of The Massachusetts Daily Collegian editorial board.
A former Collegian contributor, here. The paper did the right thing, for itself, the school and the profession. The economy and the march of the Internet have decimated our ranks. I left my reporting gig at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution just before the third wave of buyouts and layoffs in three years. Social media is making it much easier for people to find relevant news -- word of the day-to-day events around their lives. The one thing professional journalists have going for them now is their credibility. And that's a quality under constant attack by people who would prefer to neutralize every piece of information with accusations of subjectivity and bias.Too many semi-retired journalists have set up camp in too many journalism programs. The discipline appears to be an easy path to a degree for too many people who lack intellectual or moral rigor. There are too many journalism students. For the degree to have meaning, the weak and the stupid must be culled, in public. This may sound harsh, because it is. At the very least, folks need to believe a journalism grad can't be bought (cheap) and reports the facts as they are seen.I would like to answer a few comments here about the difference between stealing an idea and simply following a story. Many reporters do chase after the same story at the same time. There's no foul if reporters interview the same sources or ask the same questions. It's lazy, but not wrong. The problems start when journalists choose not to do even that, and cite others' work as their own. Legal, Bales, Professor, please take this for what its worth, from a professional journalist with about 2000 bylines on five continents -- Sobel plagiarized, it is wrong, and at a school producing professional journalists, it should be considered important. It is not libelous to say so (nor slanderous -- that's spoken -- see "Spiderman," Legal). I'm also a bit concerned about the cavalier attitude toward plagiarism that some students have taken in their comments here. I have to wonder if some folks are seeing this play out, applying this standard to their own academic writing for classes, and finding themselves on the wrong side of the ethical line.
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20271921,00.html (People Magazine)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/11/AR2009041102484.html (Washington Post) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/us/politics/13obama.html?ref=politics (The New York Times)
ALL articles are similar, and although they're not word for word verbatim, they have stolen ideas from each other...are they all plagiarists? the answer is no. good work collegian dummies.
As a student of law, who's very familiar with these types of cases...You should know..She won't be anywhere near kicked out of the university. you're insane...this incident occured in the newspaper, an independent organization...having nothing to do with her classes at all. The only way someone is kicked out of a major, or a university at UMASS Amherst is if plagiarism is happening in an academic course, or if she wrote an article for the collegian that was for an academic course. Since neither occured, she remains at the University, and in her major. So you might as well stop talking about her because she's not a celebrity, and i think there's much more important stuff going on then her...also, plagiarism of 'ideas'?? that's pretty much slander...because how many people write about the economy everyday, and write about the same ideas, how many journalists are writing now about the pirating in Somalia?? MILLIONS...do you see anyone pointing a finger at them for plagiarism? No. the Collegian should be very careful what they say....she could take them to court for slander if they keep this up.