Every month I have a conference call with some of my fellow reader advocates and ombudsmen. It’s always informative because it gives me a feel for concerns at other newspapers across the country.
But this week’s confab was real food for thought: After several topics, we got into the problems over the past several years with plagiarism. There have been some firings at small papers and at large ones like The New York Times and USA Today. For those people who might have been napping during these controversies, let me give you a terse definition of plagiarism – taking the work of other people and using it as your own.
Plagiarism is not a problem to journalism alone. Universities have become so concerned about the practice that many professors routinely run term papers and master’s theses through special computer programs to find out if the work is original.
But the practice is especially egregious in journalism, where readers and listeners should be able to trust that the work they are reading and seeing is work actually performed by the reporter whose name is associated with it.
My compadres on the conference call were chatting about how many people – even writers for college newspapers – have been caught at this practice, and then we moved to a discussion of whether there is more plagiarism now than, say, 30 years ago.
We agreed: Probably there is no more plagiarism, but it’s easier to catch now, because of computers and the Internet.
The primitive way is to pick a unique phrase from the story and plug it into Google or another search engine, but worry about the problem has become so pervasive that software companies have developed sophisticated programs that search for plagiarism while copy editors are reading stories and writing headlines. Several large newspapers on the East and West coasts have tested this new software already.
My ombuddies also agreed this problem is easy to avoid. There are times in every reporter’s life where he cannot get hold of a source or is writing a background story or analysis piece and needs to quote from another reporter’s work. The easiest thing to do in this situation is to write a part of a sentence that reads something like, “Sen. Joe Blow told the Associated Press in February that. . . .” There is no plagiarism involved in that practice. Reporters are loath to resort to such material, but there are times when it is unavoidable. Taking that logical and ethical extra step is one any good reporter follows. My compatriots also got talking about creating zoned sections that reach further down into neighborhoods and feature stories about school sports, area business people and volunteers in one geographic area. Newspapers used to be able to do this regularly in the main sections when their circulations were smaller. With the exception of national newspapers like The Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post – where the publications specifically aim at nationwide circulation and impact – most medium-sized papers are doing this to demonstrate their interest in the people living and working in their neighborhoods.
It allows newspapers to cover people and events that would not fit in the regular paper. The Salt Lake Tribune is producing community sections called “Close-Up,” and they will be in more neighborhoods during the next year.
And it means that readers find the names of people who are their neighbors and friends. We all agreed this was a productive move and one that makes newspapers even more relevant, since they cover stories that TV cannot even pretend to address.
