Jayson Blair: Sometimes plagiarists aren’t this obvious

In a world where RSS feed aggregation is the norm, and the Drudge Report is as big an online presence as the New York Times, Jody Rosen’s “Dude, You Stole My Article” piece on Slate.com, which chronicled Rosen’s investigation into a small (and now defunct) Texas alternative weekly named the Bulletin, hit a nerve for both the casual reader and any journalist who has slaved into the wee hours writing an original work.

An innocuous reader tip about Rosen’s Jimmy Buffett story possibly being ripped-off by a writer named Mark Williams, turned into the unmasking of what Rosen called, “the greatest plagiarism scandal in the annals of American journalism.” The publisher and writer essentially made blatant plagiarism the entire business model for their publication. Collectively, it’s a massive violation of fair-use and copyright laws, with a level of wanton disregard anyone can appreciate, but one that sucker punches journalists in the gut.

The most intriguing point that Rosen raises in his article deals with the infinitely more nebulous area of rss feed aggregation and content linking on the internet:

But perhaps the Bulletin is merely on-trend—or even ahead of its time. The Drudge Report, the Huffington Post, and Real Clear Politics have made names and money by sifting through RSS feeds; Tina Brown and Barry Diller are preparing the launch of their own news aggregator. Mike Ladyman and company may simply be bringing guerrilla-style 21st-century content aggregation to 20th-century print media: publishing the Napster of newspapers.

Where does aggregation end and plagiarism begin? We put the question to Bill Boyarsky, former City Editor of the Los Angeles Times and current columnist for Truth Dig, and Choire Sicha, former Editor at Gawker, New York Observer columnist, and freelancer for Radar Online.

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