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March 16, 2006
Telegraph condemns copy cats. Ha ha.
Plagiarism was big in the Daily Telegraph yesterday.
It's "rife at Oxford" said John Clare, education editor. A current student said everybody's at it. And an opinion column had harsh words. Many students "don't even bother to read the work that they cut and paste from the net," it said.
And there was a cartoon from the consistently fresh & cheering Matt. (No, I'm not reproducing it here. Register on the site and look at it for yourself.)
Which makes the silence so far emanating from Sarah Womack, the paper's social affairs correspondent, rather puzzling. Or completely understandable, depending on how pious or generous you are feeling. A story appeared under her byline this week, apparently lifted entirely from an LGA press release.
I've emailed Sarah Womack twice this week for a comment. Today will be the third. Then I'll have to ask elsewhere in the paper for an explanation.
Les
The practice of junior staffers sticking their bylines on press releases is neither new nor surprising (sadly) in this age of editorial budget cutbacks.
But it is surprising from a specialist correspondent who is meant to have a healthy base of contacts from which to produce either exclusives or informative pieces on specialised subjects.
Good on you for sticking to this Les - don't let her just fob you off. If she won't get back to you, get a comment from her news ed!
Posted by: BenB at March 16, 2006 11:13 AMSo, is it inherently bad to reproduce a presss release in its entirety (assuming you're happy with it editorially) or just to do so and claim to have written it yourself?
Posted by: Young and inexperienced journalist at March 16, 2006 11:41 AMI'm still hoping that I can get someone from the Telegraph to answer Young and inexperienced's question. That'll be more useful than my opinion. But, briefly, my objections to it are that it demonstrates bad faith. It is a trick on the reader. Given that readers give our work purpose - batting on their behalf is what we are meant to be doing - I see that as a pretty damning charge.
More soon, I hope.
Les
Posted by: Les at March 16, 2006 12:32 PMGiven Womack's apparent silence why not email MediaGuardian's Monkey diary and the Press Gazette's venerable Axegrinder?
I would do it myself but wouldn't want to take someone else's story and just put my name to it!
Posted by: BenB at March 17, 2006 11:24 AM