"Businews" Writer Roger Button Plagiarizes News Release, Makes Up Other Stuff

The long-standing business columnist at the Venice Gondolier put his byline on a news release earlier this week -- a word-for-word copy of substantial paragraphs that appear on an advertising company's website -- and then ran it on the newspaper's Wednesday business page under a headline and byline that were clearly intended to represent the purloined work as his own.  And, the part that the ethically challenged "newsman" didn't plagiarize appears to be a fiction that he created without source or substance.

Roger Button, who has been writing for the Sun Coast Media Group paper for decades, joins a long list of that publishing group's plagiarists -- reporters, editors and contributors who tell themselves it's OK to copy what others have written, omit standard acknowledgement in the form of quotation marks and attribution, and then pass the mess along to readers as their own work.

copied from the company news release:

We build marketing campaigns that connect with consumers and generate out of this world attention for businesses. If you have a company or know someone that has one, spread the word .... we're game changers. CLICK HERE to see how we can make a big impact.

We're looking for houses to paint. In fact, paint is an understatement. We're looking for homes to turn into billboards. In exchange, we'll pay your mortgage every month for as long as your house remains painted. 

Here are a few things we're looking for. You must own your home. It cannot be rented or leased. We'll paint the entire outside of the house, minus the roof, the windows and any awnings. Painting will take approximately 3 - 5 days. Your house must remain painted for at least one month and may be extended up to a year. If, for any reason, you decide to cancel after one month or if we cancel the agreement with you, we'll repaint your house back to the original colors.

If you're prepared to splash ads on your home just submit the application form below. You can post home photos on our Facebook page. We review every application. If your home has the 'it' factor a team member will reach out to you.

The only part of the article that didn't come from the news release or website is Button's unsubstantiated claim that the advertising tactic is creating "headaches" for "local governments."  Button does not identify which local governments he is referring to.  Neither does he verify the headache he reports.  In addition to plagiarism, Button seems comfortable with fiction -- making stuff up.  

   

Patrick Farino Plagiarizes the Same Letter as Agnes Howard

Today's bizarro is the same as Agnes Howard's plagiarism a few months ago.  Patrick J. Farino of Punta Gorda appears to have plagiarized the bulk of his libel from "Craig Daily Press," a right wing nut diatribe that sullied the 'Net back in January.  What is it about this letter that's so alluring to Punta Gorda's tea baggers that they want to plagiarize it twice?

More importantly, why isn't the Charlotte Sun letters-page editor recognizing that Patrick Farino's plagiarism is not the writer's own twisted fantasy?  I mean, how often does a reference to Nikita Krushchev come up these days?

If You Didn't Write it, Don't Put Your Byline on It

It's that simple: If you didn't write it, don't put your byline on it.  Even if you changed a couple of words, you still didn't write it, so don't put your byline on it. For example, don't put your byline on a news release that the sheriff's department sends to television stations, a half-dozen newspapers in the region and its own website  --  it's going to become evident to everyone in town that you put your byline on stuff you didn't write. The lede, "The Highlands County Sheriff's Office is requesting the public's assistance in locating three missing, endangered juveniles" brings up 39 results in Google.  After OWW does her thing, that'll be 40.

Plagiarism in the News

"Live from Venice" blogger Mary Kay Ruppel recently posted a comment to this blog that, in between calling Old Word Wolf nasty names, picks a quarrel with our use of the term "plagiarism." She calls it "very broad and incorrect."  We are sorry to say Ruppel is not only wrong about this, but also sorry to see that she continues to demonstrate in her own blog that she does not know when she plagiarizes.  As it turned out, her nasty-gram and her partially plagiarized Feb. 10 blog post foreshadowed this morning mail's notice of a relevant article posted at The Poynter Institute's website by Craig Silverman (founder of "Regret the Error").  Silverman comments on the news  that a Connecticut newspaper group, The Journal Register Company, now requires reporters to take a plagiarism knowledge test.  The relevance is that Ruppel's post demonstrates most of the errors that the test focuses on.

Here's the evidence. Ruppel's Feb. 10 post, headlined  “The Degredation [sic] of the Election Process," contains some distinctive phrasing:  a super PAC operator is a wealthy donor to conservative causes.  That’s followed by a quote attributed to a man Ruppel did not interview.  Ruppel says the donor’s strategy is a plan to play in the contests ahead in order to escalate the battle among a few dozen wealthy Republicans to influence their party’s choice of a presidential nominee. Near the bottom of her post, she says his “money played a pivotal part in Santorum’s unexpected wins in three states last week.”

Two days before Ruppel’s post, New York Times writers Jim Rutenberg and Nicholas Confessore published a story under the headline “A Wealthy Backer Likes the Odds on Santorum.”

Here’s how the professionals describe the super-PAC man:  “Foster Friess, a wealthy donor to conservative causes...” In the same story, they identify an interview that yielded a quote from Friess that Ruppel copies without acknowledging who held the interview, when it was conducted, or – particularly relevant to this plagiarism discussion -- how she comes to know that Friess claims he "couldn't figure out why Santorum was even bothering to go through the effort."  We're pretty sure Ruppel knows what he says because Rutenberg and Confessore published their hard work in the New York Times. Plagiarism happens whenever a writer reports a source's quote as if she has has first-hand access when she hasn't, and then fails to include the honest acknowledgment that she's lifted the quotate from a newspaper article that someone else reported.

By this point, it appears that Ruppel has failed the Journal Register's plagiarism quiz questions 1 and 2.

She plagiarizes again when she copies, and does not say from where, the conclusion that the millionaire intends to ‘play’ the contests ahead in order to escalate the battle among a few dozen wealthy Republicans to influence their part’s choice of a presidential nominee.

Ruppel's blog post provides two additional examples relevant to this explication -- on "the other side" of the ledger.

When Ruppel writes that the super-PAC operator played a “pivotal part” in Santorum’s “unexpected wins,” she synonym swaps (the NYT guys wrote “pivotal role”), suggesting that she's trying to avoid a charge of copying word for word. Ironically, she really didn’t have to worry about that because a phrase such as “pivotal role” is a cliché that appears thousands of times a day in printed matter across the land – it’s nearly an idiomatic expression in the language.  On the other hand, her studied process of changing out a word or two here and in other places in the blog post might suggest the covering of tracks -- which the honest attributor doesn’t have to do.

And finally, in all fairness, we are happy to point out that deep in the heart of Ruppel’s post, she nearly gets it right and should get an E for effort if not actual achievement.  Ruppel writes: "Yesterday I read a column in our liberal newspaper about the poor job Romney had done as Governor of Massachusetts. A year into Romney's term, Massachusetts began to stop losing jobs.  The state added jobs every year until Romney stepped down in 2007. Even so,according to Jia Lynn Yang, The Washington Post, he did a poor job."

We added the italics to highlight Yang's sentences -- complete and word for word. The rules of avoiding plagiarism require that any exact wording requires the display of quotation marks.  A reference in the next sentence, which takes up a different part of the discussion, is inadequate to honestly point Ruppel's readers to the sentences she copied.

So, what's Ruppel's quiz grade?  We calculate 2 out of 5 plagiarism standards were not violated in the writing of Ruppel's Feb. 10 column, making her score a dismal 40 percent by default (no press releases or blogs, the topics of questions 3 and 4, were involved).

As for Ruppel's charge that we don't know the definition of plagiarism, here's a close paraphrase of one that's widely circulated and which I use as the guideline for all the college-level writing classes that I teach: Plagiarism means: using another writer's words or ideas without honest attribution.

Do I have to cite my source for this definition? No, not really.  It's common knowledge -- which means that everyone knows this. Everyone except ....

Letter Writer Agnes Howard Plagiarizes Her Obama Libel

Agnes Howard of Port Charlotte, Fla., wrote a recent letter to the Charlotte Sun in which she seemed more unoriginal* and irrational than most, even considering the local  "tea party" blow-hards that the editors like to encourage (by publishing).  And she was.  

Agnes Howard is not just nasty with her words and wrong in her out-of-context "facts," but it looks like she might be a plagiarist as well. The letter that Port Charlotte's own Agnes Howard signed and sent to the editors as her composition has appeared in half a dozen other newspapers across the land since last December, has been reprinted under another name at an AOL news digest and other sites, as well.  It's impossible to tell, at this point, who the originator might be, but it's obvious who at least one of the plagiarists is.

Isn't the Web wonderful?  It's not necessary to work at being ignorant any more; the Internet can do it for you. Just sign here.

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*Nikita Khrushchev of Russia ....? Yes, Agnes not only says this, she leads with it.

Plagiarism Infects Medical Tab's Web Edition

Sun Coast Media Group plagiarism has migrated from its print edition to contaminate its Web spawn. Feeling Fit, the Charlotte Sun’s weekly tab conceived to attract pricey ads from doctors and hospitals, was once confined to print. Now, anyone can see it at Feelingfit.net (no www).

Filling whatever space the ad people didn’t sell, both web and print editions feature local copy. Unfortunately, local copy is frequently plagiarized, and often in some pretty sneaky ways. But that’s not today.

Today’s Sun Coast Media Group plagiarism – Web style – starts with old fashioned cut-and-paste and finishes with a couple of “edits,” which turn out to be about as effective at covering the writer’s plagiarism as shuffling in the sand is at covering a beachcomber’s tracks.

Carren Bersch, “Feeling Fit Correspondent,” is the by-line at the top of the Website article, “Early Detection Key to Treating Peripheral Artery Disease.” For Bersch's benefit, we’ll review two basic concepts.

First, a by-line means the named writer actually wrote everything that doesn’t appear between quotation marks. And, at real newspapers, reporters (or “correspondents”) are obligated (except in extraordinary circumstances) to tell readers exactly where the information comes from, whether it’s a direct quote or a paraphrased summary.(Unless, of course, Bersch is a qualified authority whose training, background and experience people can count on when she claims that peripheral artery disease “can lead to strokes and transient ischemic attacks.” However, absent the letters M.D. after her name, I think we can rule out her actual qualifications to make medical pronouncements.)*

And finally, let’s review the definition of plagiarism. Plagiarism, in fact, does not always have to be the slavish, word-for-word theft of another writer’s copy in order to present it as one’s own, which is the plagiarism method that Carren Bersch uses in the first two paragraphs of the story that she claims to have written. Plagiarism also happens when someone like Bersch copies the order of ideas that another writer uses to organize the original copy. Bersch does this as well. And, finally, plagiarism happens even when the word-idea-and-outline-thief changes a couple of words, creates some elisions, or flips a few expressions. In fact, this latter step is pretty much de facto evidence that the plagiarist was engaged in a willful cover-up of her nasty habit.
__________________
*Based on Carren Bersch's performance as a “correspondent,” readers can also rule out her qualification as an honest writer with ethical standards that preclude stealing the work of others and presenting it as her own (and the moxy to take a paycheck for it?)

Alone for the Holidays? Paint the Bathroom -- or Plagiarize.

This morning's "Feeling Fit" tab in the Charlotte Sun-Herald features Barbara Pierce tucking bits and pieces of an Internet site, eHow.com,  into a seasonal feature: "Alone for the holidays?  Meet the challenge."  If Pierce is on someone's gift-giving list, she needs a good book on ethics, attribution, and the fundamentals of research.

In a perverse way, however, Pierce's plagiarism is less terrifying than the advice she makes up.  The retired social worker advises lonely readers to  “think about the reasons you are alone.”

And, if contemplating the reasons one is alone on a major family holiday isn’t cheering, Pierce asks readers to answer the question, “if you are alone because you don’t have a partner, why don’t you have one?”

But to really feel good about being alone, Pierce advises cleaning out a closet and painting the bathroom.  And if that is still not cheerful enough, “cry,”  perform a “ritual of remembrance,” spend the day at a nursing home or animal shelter, and finish some old needlework. Oh, joy!

Plagiarism by Pierce isn't the only "Feeling Fit" item this week that has its roots in the Internet.

Layers of Integrity

Writing for publication requires integrity.  In ninth and tenth grade classrooms, the first layer of integrity is taught in a straightforward manner:  If you copy stuff, you have to say who you copied from.  In J-School, another layer of integrity is added: Identify news and information sources so readers can fairly evaluate the reporting.

In post-grad and professional schools, such as those attended by Licensed Clinical Social Workers, a couple more layers of integrity accrue: Professionals in positions of trust identify sources in order to demonstrate professional integrity with regard to their research and the work of their colleagues. When they're in position to dispense quasi-medical advice, they carry an additional, special burden of integrity.  Readers will, rightly or wrongly, tend to rely on the letters after their names as an indicator of their expertise -- and integrity.

Thus it's triply sad that Barbara Pierce, who claims to be a retired Licensed Clinical Social Worker, once again, betrays her readers, editors and publishers by plagiarizing substantial parts of her reporting  in the regional newspaper. In today's edition of The Charlotte Sun's Sunday tab, "Feeling Fit," Pierce's by line appears at the top of an item about traumatic events.  In it, she writes: "When bad things happen, it can take awhile to get over the pain and feel safe again."

But Pierce didn't write it.  Including the grammar error that Pierce didn't fix, it's word for word from a webpage anchored with ads and sporting a thin river of "content" down the middle called "Healing Emotional and Psychological Trauma." Readers can see it live at  Help Guide Dot Org Website.

Pierce's article in the Charlotte Sun goes on:   "Upsetting emotions, frightening memories, being easily startled, a sense of constant danger that doesn't go away. Or you may feel numb, disconnected and unable to trust each other."  Compare her sentence with Help Guide:  "You may be struggling with upsetting emotions, frightening memories, or a sense of constant danger that you just can't kick.  Or you may feel numb, disconnected, and unable to trust other people."  (It's not terribly important but for some reason, Pierce feels the need to change the websites' full-sentence copy into sentence fragments, editing acceptable 10th grade sentence structure to substandard English that wouldn't pass the state's FCAT exam.)

Pierce visits another another website over at Find Articles dot com * in order to plagiarize the nugget, "Some people are born with the ability to bounce back.  Experts promise that those of us who were not born with with ability can learn the skills to carry us through the tough times."  The same site also yields a quote from a Texas researcher.  Old World Wolf will wager a substantial amount that Pierce did not speak to that researcher herself but simply inserted a quote attributed to "Roberta Greene, Ph.D." without without having verified or actually spoken to the person. 

* Or Shape Fitness, an on-line magazine:

_______________________________

On a more cheerful note: A crash blossom worthy of  TCE's longest-ever thread filled in the lower right corner of Saturday's Charlotte Sun:

Quoting People We Didn't Speak to and Anonymous Sources

The Arcadian editorial writer leads with the shop-worn announcement: “There are many strange laws contained within Florida statutes,” and helpfully adds, “including one within the Florida Constitution ...”

Ignoring the technicality that the constitution does not contain statutes, readers are whisked directly to the news that a state representative (from a district 200 miles east and north) wants to repeal a statute regarding cohabitation. The editorial never again mentions the other lead about the strange statute, “the one within the Florida Constitution.”

To which we will return in a moment. The editorial presents problems larger than mere incompleteness and incoherence.

The news that Ritch Workman (R-Melbourne) wants to repeal an antiquated cohabitation law went up over at the Sun Sentinel website in mid-afternoon, August 31. That report contains all the quotes (and facts) the Arcadian editorial relies on without one word of attribution.

Frankly, we believe the editor copied -- an act often called plagiarism -- the Sun-Sentinel reporter’s quote from Dennis Baxley.

The belief is based on two inferences.

The first inference is identical wording. Speakers don’t normally use the exact wording they used three weeks ago. If the wording comes from press release, Arcadian editors neglected their professional and ethical duty to say so.

The second inference is the unimaginable likelihood that the local Sun-Herald/Arcadian writer contacted the state lawmaker from Ocala, soliciting comment on a bill filed by the lawmaker from Melbourne in order to write an editorial enlightening Arcadia’s good readers about a capitol kerfuffle in a congress that is out-of-session until early 2012.

After finishing with the plagiarism, the editorial writer goes on to explain the editorial's brave "maybe-maybe not" position rests on not one but two anonymous sources.

The Arcadian editorial quotes “a prominent defense attorney,” but never names him or her. It quotes “a local radio DJ,” but never names him or her.

So, the evidence of plagiarism, of quoting people not actually interviewed, reliance on anonymous sources -- what's left? Oh, yes, that statute contained "within" the state constitution. Although the editorial writer can't be bothered to identify the allusion, one might infer a reference to Article 10, Section 21 requiring the humane treatment of pregnant pigs.

Three out of Four Writers Did Not Plagiarize in "Feeling Fit" This Week

Charlotte Sun's "Feeling Fit" tab editor Karin Lillis and SCMG publishers have made it clear: In their shop, plagiarists get second and third chances. Three of their bylines (George, Marlow and Pierce) appear in this week's edition over their newest stories. Since OWW is occasionally accused of never saying anything nice, let the record show that we note, endorse and praise this accomplishment: "Nice work, ladies: You each wrote a story without plagiarizing." I'll be happy to repeat this every time it happens, so stay tuned.

Despite the rehabilitation of three past plagiarists (Once again, "Good work, gals!"), the title of this post should be "Here We Go Again."

Anyone reading "Combating Peripheral Neuropathy" in today's paper will easily detect an extraordinary shift in the last four paragraphs. Pronoun errors suddenly evaporate, dangling modifiers disappear, subject-verb faults go away, and the section is punctuation perfect.

The local editor didn't correct any of the fundamental errors in the copy's main body, so it is safe to assume that detecting a style and focus shift would be too subtle and also escape notice. But the sudden improvement in the copy's quality is notable for another reason.

The notable reason is the paragraphs were written over a year ago by a different writer, polished by a different editor, and published in a different magazine. At "Feeling Fit," the plagiarism continues.

Today's appearance of this and several other local items riddled with typos, common syntax faults and basic grammatical errors suggests that at SCMG, the title of "editor" is a pay grade, not a job description that has anything to do with making copy meet basic FCAT standards.

Plagiarism Diet: A Dash of Internet Copy Salts Dietitian's Feature

There's not much left to say when posting Sun Coast Media Group's 80th plagiarism tag in 48 months, an average of about one failure every two weeks or so in just this one sector of journalism's ethics canon. The editors at Charlotte Sun's weekly tab, "Feeling Fit," don't seem to get it: Writers who plagiarize are unethical and not in a position to be advising anyone about anything.

Feeling Fit: Your Weekly Dose of Plagiarism

It's "Feeling Fit" Sunday and the Charlotte Sun newspaper's reputation for plagiarism is upheld, once again, on page 11. Barbara Pierce kicks off her feature "Should Mom go to an assisted living facility?" this way: "When seniors begin to see a decline in their personal or mental health, assisted living becomes a good option."

That's also the way that the Internet site AssistedLivingFacilities.org opens its blog, Who Lives in Assisted Living: "When aging senior citizens begin to see a decline in their personal or mental health, assisted living care becomes a real benefit."

That same blog continues with, "Assisted living offers ... the comforts of home, as well as a social community in which to stay active."

Pierce's second paragraph changes the order a bit, but retains the blog's key words and distinctive phrasing: "Assisted living offers a community in which to stay active, with the comforts of home."

Pierce's third paragraph claims assisted living facilities provide a "desirable, cost-effective and dignified living environment," wording identical to the "Unlimited Care" website for a Spring, Texas, facility whose cottages provide a "... desirable, cost-effective and dignified living environment." The Texas site mentions "phenomenal growth" and Pierce does likewise.*

Although Pierce can read Internet websites well enough to plagiarize, she apparently can't read the part where Helpguide.org says she can't use its material if she plans to "sell or otherwise charge" for the material, placed posted at the bottom of every Helpguide.org page under "Reprints and Permissions." That's noteworthy because Pierce uses that website's content to fill out a dozen or so inches of a feature that she, we assume, sold to one of the profitable publications of Sun Coast Media Group, which in turn charges subscribers $1.75 to read the writing she was paid to produce

*Neither the Texas writer nor the plagiarist explains what phenomenal growth is. In the newspaper's Charlotte County home, that would be 14 new beds last year.

No Apologies

"That divorce is a prominent source of emotional anguish and suffering for children is obvious..." That's the opening of Rowland W. Folensbee Jr. and Florence F. Eddins-Folensbee's book review written six years ago for and published in The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

It's also a sentence published in the July 10 Charlotte Sun tab, "Feeling Fit." The news feature writer, Barbara Pierce, did not credit or acknowledge the Folensbees or their academic journal.

What the writer did was enclose that sentence in quotation marks and stuff it into the mouth of divorce researcher Judith S. Wallerstein. (Scroll down to see July 10 post.) The Charlotte Sun's feature writer also attributed another quote to Wallerstein, but that one hasn't yet been located in any of Wallerstein's works.

Pierce's motive may have been to give the story a dose of credibility that she, as a reporter, may have felt unable to deliver -- a local feature that would stand on its own merit. Let's use the Socratic method to see how well that worked.

Three questions are on the board for SCMG's ethics refresher workshop: (1) Should readers be told they've been handed a newspaper story which includes both stolen and apparently fabricated quotes that the writer inserted into the mouth of a person who wasn't interviewed? (2) Should the record be corrected to say one of the quotes comes from a publication that wasn't credited as the source? (3) Should the famous person who was not interviewed receive an apology for being made to appear to be in places where she wasn't, speaking to people she didn't speak to and saying things that she did not say?

Until "Feeling Fit" came along, Old Word Wolf would have considered these to be purely rhetorical questions -- ones in which the answer is universally understood.

Neither tab editor Karin Lillis, tab publisher David Powell, SCMG president David Dunn-Rankin nor writer Barbara Pierce has taken out space to set the record straight so the questions remain open for discussion. Do I see a hand in the back of the room?

Shabbat Plagiarism

It's Saturday morning. The Charlotte Sun has hit the driveway. We slip it from its sleeve and carry it to the breakfast table where the coffee is strong and the danish is sweet. Deep inside the newspaper's local section, Rabbi Solomon Agin tackles a current moral problem.

The teacher examines public intrusion via newspapers and such into private lives (of indiscreet politicians, for example) using the Scales of Justice where wisdom's fulcrum balances Torah on one side, and on the other -- another rabbi's blog.

Yes, Rabbi Agin has turned to Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg's Blog and copied his June 11 sermon, representing it to Charlotte Sun editors as his own words of wisdom.

A couple of red flags would alert any reasonably awake newspaper editor. The first unfurls during the exercise of actually reading the copy: The sermon ends in mid-exposition. A genre that promises a lesson ends with the puzzling and arcane: "And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because he married a Cushite woman."

Is this all there is? Yes and no. Yes; this is all the space the Charlotte Sun has for a Shabbat sermon. Cut it from the bottom. But why would a writer submit an article that requires four times the space allotted to discuss?

So, no, this is not all. The remaining 1,600 words are available on the Internet from the man who actually did the theology and exegesis, not to mention the blogging.

The second red flag is the desk itself, the desk of the newpaper's "religion editor" (or whoever pretends to this noble task).

The item comes from the word processor of a moral leader in the community. However, Charlotte Sun's religion editor should know by now that a man of god cannot be expected to translate the seventh commandment, "Thou shall not steal," to real-life journalism. And why should the local editor be expected to know this? Because Sun Coast Media Group's religion desk has a nationally recognized track record -- see left rail -- for hosting holy plagiarists.

Questionable Quotes Mar Local Feature

Barbara Pierce, Sun-Herald "correspondent," interviews a local practitioner about divorce's effect on children, and her reporting is a major feature in this morning's "fitness" tab.

Pierce quotes a local source and follows up with a second expert:

"Divorce is a prominent source of emotional anguish and suffering for children," said Judith Wallerstein, PhD, University of Berkeley, who did a 25-year study of children and divorce. "Divorce will involve sorrow and loss for your child."

"There are some legitimate reasons to get divorced," Taylor added.

The quote sandwich and attribution "Taylor added" strongly suggest both the local expert and the out-of-town expert are in the room with correspondent Pierce also present, reporting what the experts say to each other and helpfully explaining that Taylor "added" to Wallerstein's remark.

But why, a reader or editor might reasonably wonder: With such a well-known and high-powered expert in the room as Wallerstein, one who has oodles of primary data at her fingertips, why would the reporter use Wallerstein's expertise just once in 25 inches, opting instead to feature the observations of the less-expert local counselor, who -- oddly -- is given the role of adding to the national expert's observations?

If the story's bizarre imbalance isn't enough to give pause, surely an editor would detect one or two of at least four additional red flags signaling a reporter run amok:

Red Run-Amok Flag No. 1: Correspondent Pierce omits any identification of the context in which she heard the out-of-town expert, Wallerstein, tell the reporter her thoughts ("... said in an e-mail," " ... said in a telephone interview from her New York offices," "... said during her keynote address to the National Social Worker's convention held last December in Las Vegas ... "). The omission is dishonest. The reporter doesn't truthfully explain how or when she came to know that Wallerstein said what her story claims she said.

Red Run-Amok Flag No. 2: With Correspondent Pierce making it appear as if she had interviewed Wallerstein when it seems likely that she may not have, a reasonably alert editor would make a move to query the reporter for the quote's actual source. If it had turned out that the reporter lifted the words from Wallerstein's numerous entries at Huffington Post or from another newspaper article or from a professional journal, then that source must be named -- at least according to the ethical standards at most modern newspapers. If the real source of the quote is not named, then the reporter is plagiarizing from a publication she has not credited.

Red Run-Amok Flag No. 3: Maybe the quote does not come from a particular source. Maybe Correspondent Pierce (herself a social worker, according to her article's footnote) is paraphrasing the gist of what she thinks Wallerstein has said in a book or article. If this is the case, then the reporter has fabricated the quotation -- actually, fabricated two quotations.

Red Run-Amok Flag No. 4: There's no such institution as "University of Berkeley." Wallerstein is famously a Senior Lecturer Emerita at the University of California's Berkeley School of Social Welfare.

The editor and reporter can probably reach her through UC Berkeley to confirm facts, correct errors, and apologize for putting words in her mouth.

In other news from the fitness desk ...

Story: Avoid "wacky ingredients" and make "favorite snacks from scratch."

Editor's file art choice: A jar of red licorice twists. What's in a licorice twist? Let's read a Twizzlers' label: Corn syrup, wheat flour, sugar, cornstarch, licorice extract, palm oil, natural and artificial flavors, glycerin potassium sorbate, artificial color (Blue 1 and Red 40), caramel color, soy lecithin.

How might readers make a healthy Twizzler from scratch? That's not in the story.

The unintentional irony of a headline elsewhere in the same edition pretty much sums it up.

The Benefits of Plagiarism: M.D. Version

One of the benefits of plagiarism is you don't have to work hard to do it. It's easy to visit the Internet, and using any number of search engines, type in the title of an article that you would write if you had time. Let's use the phrase "the benefits of a colonoscopy" as an example.

Once an article by that title pops up in your search engine results, you don't even have to retype it to disguise your pilfering. Just change the byline to suit -- don't forget to personalize the "About the author" name at the end, and, voila! "Your" article is prepped and ready for insertion into local newspapers -- as sort of a free ad for your practice.

The master model of this method of "medical journalism" is practiced at the busy Sun Coast Media Group.

The medical tab editors of "Feeling Fit" over at the Lake Placid Journal are happy to not examine copy too closely. Editors are too busy assembling a once-a-week issue to fuss about the ethical lapse of stealing someone else's work. After all, busy editors must occasionally cut corners, and journalistic oversight is pretty much optional at SCMG. And, in the end, the benefit of plagiarism is it saves everyone the time and effort it takes to be honest with the reader and treat the community with respect.

Local Diet Adviser Plagiarizes "RD411" Website

Kitty Marlow, who claims sufficient education to become a registered dietitian with a master's degree, apparently missed the part of college that teaches professional ethics. She doesn't know that if she copies the words of others that she is plagiarizing. It's such an easy concept to master that Florida public schools introduce the concept and teach how to avoid making the error beginning in middle school language arts classes.

The refresher course: Avoid plagiarism by citing, paraphrasing and attributing. Most medical and paramedical and quasi-medical professionals go out of their way to cite credible sources to support their advice.

But not Kitty Marlow.

She writes for Sun Coast Media Group's "Feeling Fit" tab. Throughout most of her article in Sunday's paper, she simply copies most of the words in order from a website called RD411.

When Kitty Marlow strays from RD411, she abandons another kind of professional ethics. Without citing one credible peer-reviewed source, she dispenses borderline medical advice. She tells readers most people need to take a multivitamin and most people need "neutraceuticals" [sic ] That's her misspelling of her recommended product. And without a cautionary phrase in sight, tells readers that "potent plant extracts" have anti-aging properties and "dramatic skin effects" can be achieved with pine bark extracts, among other silliness. She does not disclose whether the day spa that employs her sells these items and if she has a financial interest in promoting her employer's products in this "news" story.

No harm done, however: Any reasonably alert reader, equipped with basic critical thinking skills will see that this spelling-challenged plagiarist promotes unproven hope in a bottle and will file it in the trash folder called "quackery."

More Medical Plagiarism

"By Tammy Jones" at the top of a newspaper story means Tammy Jones wrote everything you are about to read with the exception of the parts in quotation marks.

But maybe Tammy Jones of Peace River Medical didn't get the word in high school: If she copies chunks of sentences and paragraphs that others wrote and slaps her byline on top of them without quotation marks, she is plagiarizing. If she writes a newspaper article and fails to attribute paraphrased sources in a fair and honest way, she's plagiarizing. When she copies the order of ideas, pattern of development and structure of the discussion, she's plagiarizing.

Tammy Jones apparently missed English class the day her nice teachers explained that if she changes out a couple of words and flips the sequence of a couple of sentences, it's evidence she may be deliberately attempting to disguise her plagiarism.

And finally, Tammy Jones gleans her facts from one website but directs readers to another -- one more credible than "About.com" -- for more information.  Most readers expect to be referred to the same authority she used. But telling readers to visit the Skin Cancer Foundation when Tammy Jones visited About.com is a dishonesty she works on readers and the newspaper editors -- not to mention her employer who probably endorsed the use of its name, never dreaming Tammy Jones would lie about her sources, steal the writing of others, and cheat readers of a fairly reported feature article.

Bible Church Minister Plagiarizes Sermon of the Week

Richard Adomatis, who styles himself "reverend," ends a sermon in this morning's Charlotte Sun saying, "I know for certain I have received the gift of eternal life."

Old Word Wolf must clarify that: "...eternal life as a plagiarist."

It's plagiarism to use the words of others without acknowledgement or quotation marks. This particular "man of god" gives chapter and verse when he quotes from his particular holy book. But he hasn't developed the moral compass that reminds him to do similar when he cuts and pastes from a website that someone else wrote.

It's plagiarism to copy another writer's order of ideas, discussion structure, and pattern of support without acknowledging that the other writer ordered the ideas, structured the discussion, and arranged the supporting material.

Plagiarism breaks about half the commandments that this "man of god" probably claims to advocate and pounds his pulpit about on a regular basis.

So, let's see how we can follow the path of Rev. Richard Adomatis' holy example: Steal (the words of others). Lie (about your intellectual contribution). Cheat (readers from knowing the truth of your source information). Covet (what another writer created). Be boastful, prideful, and vain. Be hypocritical and work to deceive.

And there, my children, is one Christian's sermon of this week.

Flatfooted Plagiarism Continues the "Feeling Fit" Tradition

Welcome Shirley George to the ranks of Sun Coast Media Group plagiarists. Her by-lined article, "Understanding a condition called 'flatfoot'" in this morning's "Feeling Fit" tab, uses Internet material word-for-word without benefit of quotation marks or atttribution.

Old Word Wolf has been alerting Charlotte Sun editors to plagiarists in their pages for more than six years and posting names since the fall of 2007 when a Baptist pastor launched the blog, anchoring the left rail's "Rev." section. Since no one at the newspaper seems to have figured out how to detect petty plagiarism, today's outing is accompanied by a three-step procedure and graphic.

The first step is to fire up the computer and load a Google search page. Type two or three sentences that Shirley George claims to have written into the search field. You can enter the sentences individually or as a group,

The second step is to click on the Google's search button and sit back while Google roams the Internet looking for a match. But don't go out for coffee; in about half a second Google returns more than 200 websites that Shirley George could have copied from.

The next step depends on where you sit. If Shirley George were an honest self-checker, she'd know the next step is inserting a dozen or so "according to...'s " and appropriate quotation marks. If she were a real pro, she would know the next step is paraphrasing -- understanding the material well enough to explain it in her own words and attributing some more. If an editor were checking Shirley George's copy, the editor would see the next step is telling this "correspondent" thanks but no thanks: "You're plagiarizing and we don't use stuff you copy from the Internet."

None of that happened, so the next step is typing Shirley George's name into Old Word Wolf's Blogger widget that lists Sun Coast Media Group plagiarists.

And speaking of Google ....

Reader's Question: What was Cover Editor thinking?

Editor's Answer: "I was thinking I needed a shopworn cliche that's old, stale, irrelevant, not cute, been done a gazillion times before (Google should be able to locate at least a million hits) and features a bad pun that forms a hyphenated nonword that I can display in inverted commas.

Reader: OK, now I understand.