Comments

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  José Balido August 4, 2010 at 2:37am

  Once upon a time (read: mid-90s), while writing & editing a guidebook for one of the big NY publishers, I assigned the Washington, DC chapter to a relatively well-known writer, paying him from the meager budget allocated by the publisher for each chapter. By coincidence, and thanks to a good memory for turns of phrases, I noticed passages in his chapter that reminded me of copy I'd read on America Online. I navigated my way to the right pages, and lo and behold, he had indeed lifted the chapter pretty much verbatim from the site. You could say he was an internet plagiarism pioneer.
  
  When confronted, his excuse was that he had a chronic, incurable illness. That was terrible, of course, but hardly a reason to plagiarize. By then, he had half the money "down," and I couldn't trust him to complete the chapter. So I did the next best thing: hopped a train down to DC, schlepped around for a week, and wrote the chapter myself, thereby bringing the already meager payment for the guidebook even lower. Two lessons:
  
  1. Avoid guidebook work when possible. Any time I've done it, the hourly rate works out to way below minimum wage. Am I a slow writer??
  
  2. Triple-check any copy for possible plagiarism. There is now software that can do this automatically. Does anyone have any experience with this? It's going to become an increasingly important tool for editors, at least those who care about the quality of their work.
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  Allan Lynch August 4, 2010 at 2:25am

  A writer I know, who writes for the very top titles, told me about a conversation he had with one of the best-known editors in the industry. The editor told him 'I have better things to do with my time than micro-manage content.'
  
  Isn't that his job?
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  Buzzy Gordon August 4, 2010 at 2:02am

  A propos the ignorance of "editors": I complained when a major travel industry mag changed my grammar from correct to incorrect usage. In reply, I got excuses: I was told the editors are overworked!
  When I countered that it takes more time to insert mistakes than to leave correct grammar alone, I was not only ignored -- the mistake was never changed!
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  Mary E Gallagher August 4, 2010 at 1:29am

  Is it any wonder that Jim Jones convinced people to follow him and drink Kool Aid?
  Evelyn you also know you've been in the biz too long when talking to the CVB and they don't know about that fresco or most of the other attractions.
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  Allan Lynch August 4, 2010 at 1:29am

  My niece's husband is a university professor. One of his classes is on ethics. Five times in the last two years he's failed students - who are either health care providers or counsellors - for plagiarism.
  
  The problem is that plagiarism doesn't sound nasty. Theft, piracy, those words suggest the seriousness of what was done. But plagiarism doesn't even seem like a white collar crime to most people.
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  Evelyn Kanter August 4, 2010 at 1:19am

  Ed, yes, alarming. Ditto alarming is the fact-checker for a major magazine I write for who asked me whether the fresco I wrote in a 16th century church was a painting or a sculpture.
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  Ed Wetschler August 4, 2010 at 1:08am

  PLAGIARISM ON THE INTERNET
  
  A few days ago a professional travel writer who has blogged for Tripatini found that someone had lifted a story she'd written for one website and put it on another website -- with no permission, no payment, no nothing. Call it plagiarism or call it theft of intellectual property; I call it bad.
  
  In yesterday's New York Times, there's a story about plagiarism on campus. Great anecdote here:
  
  "At DePaul University, the tip-off to one student’s copying was the purple shade of several paragraphs he had lifted from the Web; when confronted by a writing tutor his professor had sent him to, he was not defensive — he just wanted to know how to change purple text to black."
  
  These are tomorrow's editors, tomorrow's (or even today's) internet entrepreneurs. Am I wrong to find this alarming?
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  Maralyn D Hill August 3, 2010 at 1:28am

  Lisa,
  Thank you for the kudos. I'm glad you like the article.
  Maralyn
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  Tripatini August 2, 2010 at 5:22pm

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  Mary Jo Manzanares August 2, 2010 at 2:55am

  Seattle area travel bloggers, writers, journalists, photographers may be interested in joining the newly formed Seattle Travel Bloggers group. Membership is by application only, and membership fee and first year dues are currently waived.
  
  The group will focus on educational and networking opportunities for members.
  
  Request membership application here: http://www.seattletravelbloggers.com/about/ or use the contact form to request additional information.