What really is Plagiarism?

I thought the readings for this week's blog were very interesting. The first two were about a former Missouri Professor, John Merrill, and the accusation of plagiarism.

First of all, the fact that the young reporter who worked for The Maneater, the college paper, was gutsy and a real journalist for first, reading the article and catching her quotes being used without proper credit given to her article, and second, because she had the guts to tell someone. I have to agree with her, if I saw someone in a major paper, even worse -- one that I respected highly, lifting quotes from one of my stories I would be so hurt and outraged.

Reading Merrill's response to losing his job at the paper and the accusation that he plagiarized made me a little confused. I just wonder how a man who says that he has had over 60 years in the journalism profession as both a teacher and a writer can make a mistake like that. Of course I understand that we are all human and that he probably didn't do it with intentions of plagiarizing a young reporter's work. But with the ever growing epidemic of copy-cats in journalism I can't seem to blame his editor for kicking him to the curb.

But I also thought his ethical argument for Kant's categorical imperative was interesting due to my recent studies of ethics. Though it reminds why the "good will" method doesn't always work. Even though someone as "good intentions" that doesn't mean it is always the right ethical call.

The last website we had to look at made me want to kick myself for not knowing it existed sooner. The Poynter Institute's helpful guide called "Places a Journalist Should Go for Politics" would have been great for me when I was writing my thesis on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign last year. Some of the things like Project Vote Smart and OpenSecrets.org were things I already knew about.

But the website that one could use to find out about candidates permits or license's in a given state was pretty fun. And the magazine Governing.com is now probably going to be one of my favorites -- up there with anything Dan Balz from the Washington Post writes.

The area for state-by-state election laws will also prove to be helpful for writing any political story. Those things can always be so complicated and if one digs enough could probably find out some interesting things that most voters don't know about.

And as an aside...I loved that the Democratic National Committee's blog name is "Kicking Ass: Daily Dispatches from the DNC."

TOO FUNNY