Several years ago, Linda Granfield’s husband visited a Nashville museum and learned that publishers of the Daily Citizen, in Vicksburg, Miss., coped with the newsprint shortage during the Civil War by printing the paper on the back of wallpaper rolls.
Linda Granfield writes history books for children and was researching newspapers at that time. It was the first she had heard about the wallpaper paper, and she was excited to include it in her book Extra! Extra! The Who, What, When, Where and Why of Newspapers.
“A flag went up instantly” when she saw the main illustration on the Sept. 18 edition of Starship, a page published for children each week in the Sunday Star. It was a lovely drawing of a Civil-War-era gentleman reading a paper printed on wallpaper.
Extra! Extra! was published in 1993 and in the introduction Granfield wrote: “Cave people drew pictures on the walls of the caves. These illustrations are thought to record important happenings.”
The first paragraph of the Starship story said, “Cave people drew pictures of important events on cave walls …”
“Ancient Romans had one of the first newspapers in the world,” Granfield’s next paragraph read. “Instead of being delivered door to door, it was posted each day in a public place. It told readers what was happening around the huge Roman Empire.”
The Starship story continued: “The Romans posted occurrences in a public place each day: Here’s what’s happening around the Roman Empire.”
Freelance writer Carol Watts used Granfield’s book to research Time Trip, a history feature published occasionally on the Starship page. All but a few paragraphs of Watts’ feature, including the story of the Vicksburg paper, were taken from the book.
Facts are facts but these facts were expressed using much of the same language and sentence structure as paragraphs in Granfield’s book. Taking work that is not your own and using it, without credit, is plagiarism.
Watts has written and illustrated Time Trip since 1989. “I’ve never had a complaint,” said Starship editor John Robinson.
Asked about the similarities, Watts said she did not intend to copy Granfield’s work. “I used poor judgment, definitely.”
“I’m just asking myself, `What were you thinking?’” she said. “It’s heart-breaking after 16 years.”
Reaching a conclusion in the Starship incident was straightforward. The material came from a single source, the text could be recognized and the writer had no proprietary right to use that material without crediting the source.
A related, but often more complex issue, is sorting out how credit is given when the newspaper combines staff-written and wire service stories. Those decisions are made every day.
The Star buys several wire services, including Canadian Press, Associated Press, the New York Times, the Washington Post and Reuters. Paying for the service gives the newspaper the right to use the material in whole or in part.
Credit can vary from a full byline at the top of the story to a “With files from Star Wire Services” note in small type at the bottom.
For example, a feature about face transplants, published Sept. 20 on Page 3, was credited to Star reporter Isabel Teotonio. At the end of the story a line said, “With files from Associated Press.”
A reader sent an email with web links to the Star story and links to the original AP feature. “I did not do a deep comparative analysis, but a ballpark eyeballing suggests that the Star story is about 80 per cent the AP’s story,” the reader wrote. ” I am wondering just how much of an article must be original to get a “writes” byline at the top of it?”
In this particular case, the editors involved now agree the primary credit, or the byline, should have gone to AP.
The story was assigned to the reporter late in the afternoon and deadlines were early. The reporter was asked to do what she could and her editors knew the file would be a combined effort. The reporter found a Toronto doctor and inserted his comments into what was, essentially, the AP feature. The news desk was expecting a staff-written story, so no one thought to ask how much was original (seven paragraphs) and how much was wire (14 paragraphs).
Crediting the staff reporter for the story was a mistake that resulted from a failure of communication.
How does the line between “theirs” and “ours” get drawn?
At some newspapers, if a reporter adds a couple of paragraphs to the top of a wire story, the reporter takes the credit for the story and the newspaper argues that’s fair game.
At the Star, the answer is common sense or, as associate editor Lynn McAuley puts it, “the reasonable reader test.” The face transplant story did not meet that test.
A number of things must be considered in deciding who deserves the byline.
Is the reporter using material from seven wire services or one? Was the wire material breaking news or a bylined feature? Were paragraphs from the wire story used virtually unchanged or were they completely rewritten? Did the reporter contribute important, new information?
The Star staff covers most of the important stories of the day and there is an element of pride in having staff bylines on prominent stories. But bylines matter more to newsrooms than they do to readers.
Editor-in-chief Giles Gherson says the paper has no problem giving a byline to a wire reporter, regardless of page or prominence. “We have no interest in misrepresenting” who did the work, he said.
“Every study I’ve ever seen on the subject shows that readers don’t really pay attention to bylines,” Gherson said, noting columnists are an exception.
While readers may not care about bylines, they do care about fairness, whether it’s fairness in content or fairness in conduct.
The paper’s connections to readers are increasingly fragile and great care must be taken to protect them, because trust, once broken, is rarely made whole.
