1. NYTimes writer Maureen Dowd made a little mistake in a recent column. Eek. What do you think of her actions. Is this something that will surely face journalist in the future as more and more bloggers get the scoop?
2. Some interesting ideas on how to save journalism. In this Washington Post column, Sanford & Brown say that the government can help. What do you think of these ideas? Is this really the way to help journalism transform?
Share your insights. Next week will be the final post of the year! NNNNNooooooooooo.
3 comments:
Eek, Maureen Dowd made quite a big mistake! Not only did she plagiarize, but she didn't own up to it, by denying she had ever read the article. I would have more respect towards her if she had admit her mistake. Maybe this will be a lesson for her in the future.
Although this may be a first for Dowd, plagiarism has occurred in print journalism for quite sometime (Steven Glass...). Maybe bloggers are just making the chase easier for newspaper journalists.
Plagiarism goes far and beyond journalism however.
Reading the piece on Dowd reminded me of the law suit Coldplay is currently in.
Coldplay is being sued for plagiarizing their song Viva la Vida, which is proven to be a duplicate of a song by Joe Satriani, a guitarist, without the lyrics.
When Coldplay was called out by Satriani, the lead singer claimed they had never heard of Satriani, although they quoted him in a Rolling Stone article many years before.
No matter what, things like this always come back to haunt you..
I agree with Amanda.
Plagiarism is something that will always comeback to haunt you no matter how much you try and cover it up.
In this day and age, getting access to any number of people's essays and opinions is as easy as doing a Google search. That makes plagiarism as easy as going online. I'm sad to see that Maureen Dowd succumbed to that temptation.
I think one of the most important aspects of journalism is it's commitment to accuracy and original ideas. It's a bond of trust between the reader and the newspaper that the paper will attribute things correctly. I'm saddened that Maureen Dowd broke that trust.
I just read the Sanford and Brown article regarding how to save journalism, and I don't know if their suggestions made complete sense to me. I understand that their idea is to bring legislation to the table that will impose copyright laws on websites like Google and blogs in order to ensure the protection of the news, but I honestly don't think that that is the answer to saving newspapers. It might improve their situation in the online domain, but I don't know how that is going to have a major effect on the industry. As they stated, Google has found a way to get around the majority of the copyright laws to date, and I don't see how these new laws would slow them up. They simply own too much market share.
At the same time, I think that it is important for the government to come up with some way to save newspapers. I think that technological advancements, particularly in the e-ink segment, are going to be incredibly important. Imagine having a newspaper that was the same thickness and size of a newspaper and could update itself wirelessly, was touch-screen capable, and could play videos and other multimedia. In my mind, it is technological advancements like these that will save the newspaper industry in the long-run.
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