Did the NY Observer plagiarize a Radar trend story?

(Image: myownprivateidaho.com; Getty Images; outnow.com via Observer.com)

In today's New York Observer ran a saucy trend piece by Joe Pompeo titled "The Hipster Rent Boys Of New York," whose dek explains the story: "No more L train for us! In frigid economy, striving young men are turning to the oldest profession to make the city work for them."

In other words, prostitution among twentysomething, possibly-gay, Williamsburg, Brooklyn-inhabiting hipsters.

But a colleague of mine suggested that he had read this story somewhere else, not long ago...yes, that's it! It was in Radar's September issue, by Jessica Pilot, titled, "Secrets of a Hipster Hooker," with a dek that reads: "The author's friends are stylish, well-educated, and professionally successful young women in New York City. They also turn tricks on the side for $2,000 an hour. One day she decided to follow in their footsteps."

Now, the story isn't plagiarized in the most common sense, in that it's copied word-for-word. It's more an intellectual property plagiarism -- you know, running the same story in the same market in almost the same time frame (five months).

Any good editor would deny a reporter who came to him or her with this "idea." But did Pompeo copy Pilot? And who was reporting the story first?

Hard to say, and there are differences: Pilot's story is about women, whereas Pompeo's is about men. Pilot's story was written pre-recession; Pompeo's uses it as a motive for the prostitution.

So it's fair game, right?

Well, what if I told you they quote the same source as their token "expert"? (That would be Sudhir Venkatesh, a sociology professor at Columbia University whose expertise lies in high-end male and female escorts.)

What if they use the same obvious Eliot Spitzer-Ashley Dupre foil in the story?

Now what do you think?

For me, it's a little too close for comfort.

In a Dying Industry, Alt-Weeklies Have More Crises of Faith

It seems New York's two major alternative weeklies, the Village Voice and New York Press, continue to appear to have ethical lapses, despite new editors at each.

Just today, Jezebel published a post comparing the New York Press' brand-new sex-advice column to a previously published column by nationally syndicated sex-advice guru Dan Savage (who, ironically, appears in the pages of the Voice). According to them, it smells a little fishy:


Claudia Lonow's column in NYP:

Yo, Lonow:
My girlfriend and I have been living together for two years, and we're beginning to talk about marriage and kids. I love her, but I'm beginning to be weirded out by her relationship with her brother. They're always touching in each other. (continues here....)

Dan Savage's 2006 column:

Here's one for you: My girlfriend and I have been living together for two years, and we've talked about marriage and kids. Like all relationships, ours wasn't perfect. But what really bothered me was my girlfriend's relationship with her brother. They were touchy-feely in a way that felt inappropriate. (continues here...)

If you keep reading, it gets a little too similar to rule out plagiarism for my taste.

On the other hand, the Voice had its own problems a few weeks ago, when its new art critic had some unethical (or at the least, unprofessional) connections to the very subject he was critiquing:

"It has been brought to our attention that Christian has been named managing director of two upcoming commercial art fairs, one in New York (Volta) and one in Chicago (Next). Christian assures us that the consulting work he is doing for those fairs does not conflict with anything he has written for us or would write in the future, and he has demonstrated to us that besides being an excellent and highly readable critic, he’s also a man of integrity. But we’re concerned that his work outside the Voice at least creates an appearance of conflict...he will cease writing for us."

Hmm. If alt-weeklies think they face problems from mergers on high, they should probably look on down to their own newsrooms first. Bottom line? It's not looking good for these two. Next time either post a job requirements list, "ethics" should probably be at the top.

How My Alma Mater's Student Newspaper Got Away With Plagiarism

Last week, it came to my attention that my alma mater's student newspaper -- New York University's Washington Square News -- got away with plagiarism.

(To get full disclosure out of the way: as an undergrad, I once served as news editor at WSN. Some of the senior staff who work there, including the one in question, are former colleagues.)

On August 27, 2007, a fun feature story called "The Unofficial NYU Dictionary," by Barbara Leonard, was published for the paper's first issue of the year. The story, which details all of the campus jargon that a new NYU student might run into, ran in the printed edition and online (click here to see a scan of the original story).

However, the same story, slightly adjusted, ran under a different writer's name exactly one year prior. "Your guide to... NYU's dictionary," by Rachel P. Kreiter, ran August 28, 2006. In comparison, this year's version changed the lede, fleshed out some of the entries and bolstered the list a bit -- but nary a mention of the existence of Kreiter's original article was evident in paper or online (you can find it by searching the archives or clicking here).

Here's some evidence:


(More scans of comparable passages available here, here, here, here, here, here and here.)

Now, every student newspaper screws up in print; this is evident in the plethora of spelling errors that we see in every issue of every school's paper. In this case, Leonard's article ran in the paper and online without proper attribution. It's college; it happens. Students are learning what to do and what not to do. But when the Washington Square News realized its error, it made only one change -- to the byline of the new article sometime that afternoon, changing it to 'WSN STAFF.' (The paper version, already out on the streets, was beyond repair.)

Now here's an example of poor news judgment. When someone in your paper accidentally plagiarizes -- after all, it certainly doesn't seem malicious since the article is an evergreen one -- you simply run a correction. But what you don't do -- especially by commonly accepted online rules -- is change an important part of the story without saying so. It's a matter of transparency. But the Washington Square News neither acknowledged that it needed to properly attribute its own writer nor that it had made a change to the article in the first place. Plus, the online story doesn't match the paper version, and there's no indication of why that is.

There has been some tension behind the scenes about this very issue, and from what I understand, WSN plans on printing a correction in the next issue, which is due sometime soon. But I must ask: why not simply run a correction online, where the "printing press" is 24/7? Why wait until the printed issue? And furthermore, now that it has changed the byline of the story online, how will it explain its news judgment -- that is, making a change unannounced while still failing to give the original writer credit?

Where's the staff adviser in all this mess?

I know this isn't the front page of the Washington Post, and I'm not trying to "out" anyone or chew former colleagues out, but I'm using an example near and dear to my heart to show that these things often begin in college, and go unchecked. Thankfully, former WSN staff caught it before someone else did.

As journalists, our reputations are always on the line -- and poor housekeeping like this erodes what little we have left in our readers' eyes. After all, wasn't it Jayson Blair who so carefully internalized -- and then outright plagiarized -- his stories for the University of Maryland's The Diamondback before moving on to higher-profile missteps at The New York Times?

CORRECTION 9/7/07: Washington Square News ran a correction at the bottom of page 6 in Wednesday's issue, saying that the mistaken article "should have credited Rachel P. Kreiter as one of its authors."

What Wire Services and Britney Spears (Could) Have In Common

Ah, I just love the smell of plagiarism in the morning.

If wire services could talk, that's what they'd be saying, according to a recent article by CNET News writer Greg Sandoval. Apparently, newspapers aren't too happy that Google indexes their content without ponying up the cash for it.

You could say that the old newswire bus has crashed into the technology car at a major intersection, and the wire is not about to dole out its insurance information.

Even Sam Zell, the new owner of the Tribune Company, chimed in on the issue: "If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be?" he asked reporters during a speech at Stanford University a month ago. According to the Washington Post, he didn't wait for a reply. "Not very," he said.

Business versus journalism. The business of the news. Selling information.

Maybe calling this the "Information Age" isn't such a corny moniker after all.

To date, Google has stood firm, refusing to pay to index news content. After all, in their eyes they're just pointing people in the right direction. And it's apparent that the newspapers need the traffic -- the article notes that newspapers get a quarter of their total traffic from search engines.

Yet at the same time, Google's been slowly making agreements with major agencies -- The Associated Press and Paris-based Agence France-Presse, for starters.

So who's to blame at this moral impasse?

It's apparent to me that the newspapers should reevaluate how much money they're losing. In fact, they may end up actually making money from the additional traffic.

Yet no one's conducted such a study.

Let's say the Wall Street Journal wasn't all that happy that Google News indexed its content (after all, Dow Jones has its own newswire). In the end, is the paper actually making more money from additional advertisement impressions and (digital) subscriptions than what it hypothetically loses from the exposure?

How do you even measure such a thing? The whole concept reeks of speculation. But without some way to measure it, there's no point in continuing the argument.

In the meantime, newspapers could pretend that they are celebrities. They could stop wasting time trying to fight the Google News 'paparazzi' in lieu of learning how to act in front of them.

Get used to being covered. Make it work.

In other words, stop getting angry that you're being covered and start putting energy towards being covered in the best light. It's one big game of whisper-down-the-lane, but every time someone whispers, it comes with the original attribution.

What's to complain about that?

Really, it seems that newspapers are uncomfortable making headlines. They're too busy worrying about the value of their own news than being in another's. And it's no surprise -- every time a newspaper makes headlines, it's usually for a bad reason.

Time to break the habit. No more 'no comment.' When circulation is down, whining and crying about unintended syndication is only shooting yourself in the foot.