The 11 December issue was reruns from 1995 since I was down with the flu. One of those stories was this one (which dealt with trying to embarrass journalists into better writing so there aren’t so many errors in the paper). It was only the second “rerun column” ever in 11-1/2 years of weekly True issues.
Well Guess What? That made it really easy to discover that there are newspapers out there that don’t buy True as a feature column (yes, I do sell it to newspapers as a column), but use items from it anyway! That’s absolutely theft. They stole something I sell to make a living.
One of the culprits was the Toronto Star, who even used my tagline as if it was their words. I probably would have caught them, but someone else did first: Regret the Error, an entertaining newspaper blog.
RtE’s editor wrote me on New Year’s Day to ask if I was aware of the plagiarism, and would I comment on it? I was not, and did:
I’m a university-trained journalist and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists. This isn’t how I learned journalism. I learned to give proper attribution. I learned to have a second source for items that are dubious. And, most importantly, I learned to have respect for the process of journalism.
Where is that respect and professionalism now? We can’t just blame Jayson Blair. Plagiarism and made-up stories is just the most outrageous fact of life now. We have long had typos and grammar blunders that would make Strunk and White seethe — so many that they’re not even worthy of comment, even ridicule, anymore.
What will be the ultimate result? We’re already seeing it: people are forgetting about newspapers and turning to TV and the Internet to get their news, because they just can’t trust newspapers anymore. We have the L.A. Times putting a hoax story on its front page. We have major city papers lifting items from a columnist, even though it’s a cinch they’ll get caught.
Newspapers scream and cry that people just don’t care anymore. They don’t get it: people do care. They care that the news is correctly reported. They care that it’s written well. They care that it’s edited well. They care that proper attributions are made. And they’re just not getting that from newspapers anymore, so they’re moving to other media where they can get it (or, at least, think they can). And it’s not fun to watch newspapers take yet another step into the depths right before my eyes.
He ran the entire comment verbatim.
Then, today, the newspaper industry bible, Editor & Publisher, ran with the story too.
It’s not the only recent newspaper blunder of taking stuff from the Internet: the Los Angeles Times recently ran a front page(!) story that a reporter sourced from the Internet; it turned out to be a hoax.
This is Why Newspapers are Failing
It’s astounding to me that in this era of instant communications that newspapers ever attempt plagiarism or lazy sourcing practices, and then think they can get away with it. That newspapers don’t understand that the Public Trust is involved here, and their continued violation of that trust is the reason fewer and fewer people are reading newspapers anymore.
This stuff matters! Newspapers are supposed to be the defenders of high professional standards, not the leader in savaging them.
I am extremely careful to state where I get the facts I use to write my stories, even though that’s not required by copyright law. I’m very careful to use only the facts, not the “flavor” of how they’re put together, only partly because that is required by copyright law. This isn’t rocket science (and, as a guy who worked for 10 years at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I know rocket science when I see it).
If a guy working out of a spare bedroom at home understands this, why don’t supposedly professional newspaper editors and publishers get it? As I told Regret the Error, as a journalism school graduate and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, “it’s not fun to watch newspapers take yet another step into the depths right before my eyes.”
Hiding in the Shadows
Within days, the Star removed the story from their web site and issued a half-hearted correction. RtE followed up [no longer online], and editorialized:
Rather than explain how the writer came to select the item and then fail to verify it, the Star merely mentions that it was a decade old and ‘re-posted’ on Cassingham’s site. It does not apologize to Cassingham. It does not explain that what was done is against Star policy and why. It does not detail any disciplinary action, or why none was taken. Let’s be clear: We’re not exactly calling for heads to roll, but the Star has to meet a higher standard of disclosure. Perhaps these issues will be addressed in a column from the Public Editor. But, for now, this inadequate correction is almost worse than no correction at all.
Sadly, the newspapers involved counted on something: that if they just deleted and hid, it would blow over. And indeed it did. Next time, I’m turning the case over to my attorney for action.
Update: The case made Regret the Error’s 2006 “Crunks List” (worst gaffes of the year), in the “Best Abuse of Archives” section. Meanwhile, I have stopped selling True to newspapers as a column.
– – –
Bad link? Broken image? Other problem on this page? Use the Help button lower right, and thanks.
This page is an example of my style of “Thought-Provoking Entertainment”. This is True is an email newsletter that uses “weird news” as a vehicle to explore the human condition in an entertaining way. If that sounds good, click here to open a subscribe form.
To really support This is True, you’re invited to sign up for a subscription to the much-expanded “Premium” edition:
Q: Why would I want to pay more than the minimum rate?
A: To support the publication to help it thrive and stay online: this kind of support means less future need for price increases (and smaller increases when they do happen), which enables more people to upgrade. This option was requested by existing Premium subscribers.
These are the same failing newspapers that are now rushing to governments wailing about how their content is being ‘stolen’ because people are linking to it, and demanding the linkers be made to pay a ‘fair’ compensation.
And Canada is the latest country to fall for the lie.
Newspapers haven’t been in the business of selling news to people in decades. The news is a loss-leader these days. They make their money by selling advertising space, especially on their websites. The more eyeballs see the adds, the richer they get.
When a site like Facebook or Google links someone to a news story, they’re also linking that person to the ads imbedded in the news article. The social media or search engine isn’t making any money to speak of from someone clicking the link, it’s a free service that is cost-neutral to them, for the convenience of their customers. So the newspaper is getting paid for every link someone clicks, at near-zero cost to the place the user found the link, and zero cost to the newspaper. Pure profit.
But the newspaper owners are greedy, and want to be paid a second time for the same page view, so they often implement paywalls. And the link tax laws they’re pushing for now are them wanting to be paid a third time. And they want to be paid exorbitantly.
The consequences are predictable. Rather than pay astronomically high fees for the ‘privilege’ of doing someone a favor, the companies doing those favors have simply stopped doing favors for newspapers. This is why search and social media companies aren’t displaying any news links to Canadians these days.
Of course, the newspapers ran to the government again, wailing that it’s unfair that the social media and search companies aren’t willing to pay to do someone a favor, and they’re demanding that the Canadian government make it mandatory for non-news companies to carry news links AND pay exorbitant fees for the privilege.
Given the fact the Prime Minister there is calling the companies dropping their news links for Canadians “irresponsible and dangerous”, it’s likely Canada will make speech both mandatory and expensive for social media and search companies, with the most likely result being those companies simply pulling out of Canada entirely.
I fully expect Trudeau to make it illegal for companies not to do business in Canada after that.
A reasonable summary of the Canadian situation and a fair comment. However, not enough condemnation of the Toronto Star, a key newspaper supporter of the Liberal government, and a recipient of the federal government subsidies to newspapers (at the taxpayers cost, of course).
Wondering why you stopped publishing in the papers? Seems like that was a legitimate source of income for you and good for the papers. Is it that they don’t want the columns anymore, too expensive?
—
Many papers have simply gone out of businesses. Others cut way back on expenses. Either way, it was a rapidly shrinking market, so I concentrated on what worked. -rc
“(P)eople are forgetting about newspapers and turning to TV and the Internet to get their news, because they just can’t trust newspapers anymore.”
Actually, they’re turning to the Internet and TV because those media don’t require them to think.
—
Habits have definitely evolved in the past 17 years. -rc