Plagiarism Paranoia

Well, this week's reading has officially scared me. The story of John Merrill’s plagiarism accusations are quite unsettling. I hate to think that the one mistake, one oversight can tarnish a journalist's career. As a journalist, even the most minute oversight could come back to haunt me time and time again.

Merrill's opinion piece was interesting to read as well. I feel kind of bad for the guy considering that a lifetime of creating and critiquing journalism is now tarnished with the plagiarism accusation.

I thought that the two articles did a good job of presenting me with both sides of the argument.

I think that article hit home with me because of my experience getting stories off the AP wire. Newswires are growing in importance all the time. While they save journalists time -- and probably more noteworthy, companies money -- I think that it also leads to laziness in reporting. It's easy for someone sitting in a newsroom just to make a few clicks and receive a story...what's more difficult is for that person to take the initiative and make sure that the story is the best possible portrayal of the news.

I think the lines are blurry when it comes to cited and uncited sources. I feel that in this case Merrill was a fault but what about when a quote comes from the AP wire or another publication that may have widely known information, what's the proper citation? I remember the first article I'd ever had published was for my high school newspaper when I was a sophomore. I emailed the article -- which was about changes in funding from the Minnesota State Department of Education -- to my editor and at the bottom wrote something to the extent of, "I cited information from the Pioneer Press, do I need to cite that?" The answer was, of course, yes.

Sometimes the obvious is less apparent than it should be. Sometimes writers are uninformed, misinformed or just flaky. It's a scary thought, but I'll inevitably make mistakes in my career, I just hope that I don't ever have to deal with the backlash that Merrill did. Yikes.

At least this week's reading ended with a laundry list of sources for political information. How exciting? Well, maybe for some but for me it was an information overload. I'm sure "Places Journalists Should Go for Politics" is good heading, but honestly, I would need to alter the title to say: Places Journalist Should WANT to Go for Politics. Sorry. As much as I try, I just can't get excited with the thought of digging out the skeletons from a politician's closet for a living.

The cites and sources here are quite helpful I'm sure. I say more power to journalists who want to scour the web looking for a politicians criminal record or how they voted on an issue decades ago.