sheeats Posted August 7, 2008 Share Posted August 7, 2008 Interesting piece today in Slate about a Montgomery County newspaper (The Bulletin) that has been "borrowing" articles from other sources / newspapers / magazines without giving any credit: Dude, You Stole My Article My first impressions? Mark Williams totally doesn't exist. And I'm surprised that even after being called out for their alleged plagiarism, the newspaper went ahead and printed a new issue with even more cribbed articles! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sheeats Posted August 7, 2008 Author Share Posted August 7, 2008 An update... Alison Cook, from the Chron, did some additional investigative work and found that the Bulletin has stolen articles from right here in Houston: Barbecue & plagiarism in Montgomery County's Bulletin A snippet from her article: I began to read, and sure enough, part way through the 1300-word piece, the prose started to sound eerily familiar. No, that's not what I mean--it wasn't my work, but my radar went off when I got to the un-Williamsesque sentence, "Barbecue is all about the virtues of the slow: the triumph of no-rush communal cooking in the great outdoors." I plugged the phrase into Google and came up with both the Bulletin article and an identical sentence ina 2005 MSNBC piece about barbecue books, written by Jon Bonne. The first book Bonne reviewed was none other than the Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook by Houston's own Robb Walsh, my friend and counterpart at the Houston Press. "That's it!" I thought. "A lot of the Bulletin article sounds like Robb." I pulled up Robb's article "The Art of Smoke," a long piece written in 2000. Suspicions confirmed: Williams ripped off great honking chunks of Robb's prose for his ode to Holder's, scarcely even bothering to change a word for paragraph upon paragraph upon paragraph. Really, it's amazing. The lifting starts at the beginning of Robb's section 2 and continues merrily--omitting what must have seemed like a pointyheaded reference to Marshall McLuhan--right through his enumeration of barbecue styles and their history. Then Williams blithely splices in a reference to Holder's and it's over and out. There are more plagiarism allegations against them this morning, too. What a circus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoustonianInColorado Posted August 8, 2008 Share Posted August 8, 2008 An update... Alison Cook, from the Chron, did some additional investigative work and found that the Bulletin has stolen articles from right here in Houston:Barbecue & plagiarism in Montgomery County's Bulletin A snippet from her article: There are more plagiarism allegations against them this morning, too. What a circus. What a thief. Stealing someone's words is inexcuseable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joke Posted August 10, 2008 Share Posted August 10, 2008 What a thief. Stealing someone's words is inexcuseable.Much better to make up your own. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sheeats Posted August 10, 2008 Author Share Posted August 10, 2008 Follow-ups, for anyone interested, both from the Houston Press:R.I.P., Plagiarizing Montgomery County NewspaperJody Rosen of Slate RespondsCheck out the first link for the most hilarious, most bitter, most insane letter of "apology" from the writer you'll ever read. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoustonianInColorado Posted August 11, 2008 Share Posted August 11, 2008 Much better to make up your own. Borq diggle flazzi crile. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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