This Just In - Journalism Rife with Plagiarism!

Check out this piece in the Mercury about plagiarism, oh wait it is actually in the Consumerist... or find it in many other articles on Google, written all slightly differently but the content is basically the same.

Like millions of other bloggers I collect bits and pieces of news I find interesting, important, or relevant to share with the world, or the small bit of world that reads this blog. Digital gossip. The republishing of works is sometimes illegal and sometimes not. For instance the statesman journal states no reproduction, republication, or rewritting. While other news posts give you a track back code automatically when you copy part of the articles, encouraging bloggers to talk about their works! What a concept, word-of-mouth advertising.

As an author almost nothing I write is new. I am a private environmental research scientist and I am often (not always) reporting on methods other people devised, implemented, and/or analyzed. That is what good journalism is. The ability to synthesize and distill out the junk, engage the reader, and get the point across.

The world is in turmoil. Millions of people are starving, a great part of our human community is living in oppression, people can't feed their families, etc. Although I would like to travel the world and report on the Aung San Suu Kyi's of the world, I can't. I am a white, middle-class, American female mostly pre-occupied with paying my bills, running a company, and being a wife. But do I need to travel to Myanmar to report first person? There are scores of people already doing just that and doing a better job than I ever would because remaining objective is difficult. But by re-reporting their work I am cataloging this information with a slightly different index. Not every person watches Comedy Central or reads Slate. Readers may not get to every article that I do. Certainly not all of the email lists, private subscriptions (which for obvious reasons I do not republish in entirety), or conference/meeting minutes.

Above all else truth, justice, peace, and goodwill. Journalism should promote literacy (both language and politics) in whatever form to as many people as possible. This is the only way to a sustained peace.

Now straight-up high-jacking a piece without proper credit and then making money through adverts or commission is totes un-cool. There isn't anything wrong with re-reporting, just be honest. It doesn't really make sense to publish the internet either, that is kind of the point, we should be digitizing more print media.