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News & ArtsSaturday, September 1, 2012
Media NYU Journalism Professor Says "the Industry" Shares Blame for Plagiarism
Posted by Bethany Jean Clement on Sat, Sep 1, 2012 at 9:22 AM
At Wired.com's request, NYU journalism professor Charles Seife reviewed 18 of Jonah Lehrer's posts for the site and found:
...14 instances in which Lehrer recycled his own work, five posts that included material directly from press releases, three posts that plagiarized from other writers, four posts with problematic quotations and four that had problematic facts.
Amazingly, in the last paragraph over here, professor Seife says, well, it's kinda-sorta HIS (and all of us media types') fault:
Seife does not blame Lehrer exclusively though. “Lehrer’s transgressions are inexcusable—but I can’t help but think that the industry he (and I) work for share a some of the blame for his failure,” he writes. “He rose to the very top in a flash, and despite having his work published by major media companies, he was operating, most of the time, without a safety net. Nobody noticed that something was amiss until it was too late to save him.”
He needed to be saved by someone telling him to write his own work?
2
I think what Saife is saying is Lehrer might not have gone off the rails in the first place if he'd risen in a business that still had a motherfucking attentive and powerful fleet of editors. And that in the alternative, if Lehrer being off the rails for good had been noticed in time he could have been kicked to the curb before he ever rose to such a height.
Every writer thinks they're hot shit and don't need editing. Not typo-grammar editing, but "this is still shit, you can do better, cut the hype" editing. Reporters who actually are hot shit need editing the most. Nowadays in an industry running scared, editors are expected to hype their talent pool, not monitor and rein in their excesses.
Mind, I've not studied any of this at depth, just what I've picked up as a fairly broad, occasionally close reader over the years.
Every writer thinks they're hot shit and don't need editing. Not typo-grammar editing, but "this is still shit, you can do better, cut the hype" editing. Reporters who actually are hot shit need editing the most. Nowadays in an industry running scared, editors are expected to hype their talent pool, not monitor and rein in their excesses.
Mind, I've not studied any of this at depth, just what I've picked up as a fairly broad, occasionally close reader over the years.
4
And that's a "journalism professor"? How much more oblique can you possibly be?
Lehrer is responsible for what Lehrer did.
No one else is.
The organization that published his work is responsible for publishing it.
Which is different than writing it.
Two different faults, two different issues, two different entities.
Lehrer is responsible for what Lehrer did.
No one else is.
The organization that published his work is responsible for publishing it.
Which is different than writing it.
Two different faults, two different issues, two different entities.
5
What I savor most about writing for Crosscut is that the site has real editors--who ask questions, probe for meaning, verify names, ask for sources--and produce, at the end of the day, a piece that reads the way it should have read in the first place. You drive your banged-up, beat-up wreck into their shop, and it emerges bright, shiny and new. The master of this was Michelle Matassa Flores, who's now ME at the Puget Sound Business Journal.
7
I recently started using iThenticate on every essay turned in when I'm teaching my online psychology class. It cuts down on word-for-word plagiarism, but it has revealed how some students are very poor writers. I guess they've been going through life copying online essays and journal articles. One woman, who will be expelled probably, tried to do something like translate her essays into Polish or something and then back to English, thinking that would make them different enough from the obviously-plagiarized articles from whence they came. The software can actually detect plagiarism like that based on word order, concept order and sentence construction. *I* noticed something was suspect based on her essays being garbage soon after we implemented the software.
I guess my point is that it takes about 30 seconds to check a submitted article for plagiarism, including self-plagiarism and "idea"-plagiarism.
I guess my point is that it takes about 30 seconds to check a submitted article for plagiarism, including self-plagiarism and "idea"-plagiarism.
9
Managing editor of newspaper thinks editors have no responsibility for, like, editing. OK. No wonder The Stranger was caught plagiarizing a few years ago.
11
Personally I believe a true writer should be so full of themselves and the quality of their own work that the idea of using someone else's art would and could never be more amazing then their own.
So thus, if you feel as though someone else is able to convey something better than you, let them write about it and find something else to do.
As for recycling his own work, that should not be called plagiarism, that is ridiculous. Musicians and painters do this all of the time.
So thus, if you feel as though someone else is able to convey something better than you, let them write about it and find something else to do.
As for recycling his own work, that should not be called plagiarism, that is ridiculous. Musicians and painters do this all of the time.
12
More editors everywhere. An editor to every two writers. An editor in every garage. Everyone an editor. These are my demands.
13
I think I can see what Seife is saying, to a certain extent. The truth is that rules inevitably get bent sometimes; newcomers may know that such actions are against the rules, but the difference between the forgivable and unforgivable transgressions may not always be clear to them. There should've been an editor that caught him early on and let him know this kind of thing was going to destroy him if it happened again.
14
@10 & @11 - The New Yorker was paying him for original content for their publication, not his greatest hits. The Stranger may pay a writer for a reprint, but it's noted as a reprint and the writer would not get the same payment as they would for original content. Yes artists, novelists, and musicians often repeat and repackage, but they don't receive the payment or recognition. Andy Warhol's millionth Campbell Soup can is known as the millionth version of the Campbell Soup Can not a wholly new piece. A compilation of the Beatles greatest hits is sold as "The Beatles Greatest Hits".
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