Ron Hurtibise, our West Volusia bureau chief and my favorite polymath, likes to say that imitation is the best form of flattery.And he likes to say it calmly while I rail about my stories being ripped off.
"You’re the one who’s setting the standard so you have nothing to worry about," he says as he sits on a newsroom table atop rival newspapers.
The media borrow from each other. Sometimes it becomes news because another organization brought attention to it. (I’ve heard copy from my own stories as blurbs on TV.)
Then there are the Stephen Glasses and Jayson Blairs of the industry – the creators of their own fiction rather than reporting fact, industry black sheep writing memoirs and hoping for the best.
But isn’t there a fine line between so-called borrowing and plagiarism? I thought we learned about the eternal "wrongness" of plagiarism back in, oh, our intro to journalism days.
Is it plagiarism when ledes read the same? When the content is the same? When can you do something about being ripped off?
I disagree with Ron. Imitation isn’t the best form of flattery. A story isn’t a kid sister trying to dress up like me. Find another angle; talk to a different source.
No. In this business, imitation is the worst form of laziness.
Photo courtesy Andre Melan from the FSL Shamrock Showdown 2007 International Skydiving Competition at Skydive DeLand
2 comments:
To glean facts from a story and expand on them or give them a new interpretation is one thing; grabbing someone else's work -- especially without attribution -- is something else.
Sadly, journalism is sometimes a refuge for the lazy as well as the talented. And, unlike rock musicians who see others making use of their creative efforts, when writers are ripped off, there is seldom much of an outcry.
I wish I knew what to do without seeming petulant and unprofessional.
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