Not bad

Quincynews.org debuts and already beats the H-W on two stories -- bookstore opening and Tribune pulling out of Quincy delivery. Not too shabby.

Catching up

The demands of work overwhelmed me for the last couple of weeks so I have not been able to keep up the blog.

Random observations:

The Quincy Pundit's continued dogging of the H-W for not admitting it plagiarized its editorial on the Medal of Honor winner is fun to read although probably increasingly quixotic at this point. The pundit also provided a link to an excellent column by Roy Peter Clark on the subject of journalistic plagiarism in general. The link is here, in case you missed it. Bottom line: journalistic plagiarism is all too common, and in this instance the sad fact that it happened is compounded by the paper's stonewalling. The anecdote that Clark uses to discuss plagiarism at the beginning of his column, by contrast, shows a better response: admitting that it happened, public regret that it did, and a vow not to let it happen again. Denial brings repetition. One odd thing from the whole incident.....why didn't the competition cover it? It's news. Is there some sort of "gentleman's agreement" not to cover each other's dirty laundry?

Glad to see the announcement of QuincyNews.org. Just hope it doesn't go dormant as fast as BlogQuincy! did.

My favorite recent headline: Sunday's "Comcast still in evaluation mode." Translated: "Comcast still in 'Quincy? Where the hell is that?' mode."

Also in that same paper, this guy Tieken was described as an archaeologist, but when I checked the website of the North American Archaeological Institute, it did not once mention his credentials. Not that he's not an archaeologist, but it would have been nice for the newspaper story to tell us what justification he has for that claim. I also note that the NAAI (so named) is run out of his house. Who knows, maybe I'm the executive director of something around my house too! I'd better check with the spouse and see.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Those are the words at the bottom of the Associated Press's April 8 article on the awarding of the Medal of Honor to Michael A. Monsoor.

The full text of the article, along with the text of the Herald-Whig's April 10 editorial on Monsoor's award ceremony, may be seen here:

http://quincypundit.blogspot.com/2008/04/
about-that-editorial-plagiarism-take.html

The Quincy Pundit spotted this rather obvious cut-and-paste job on the day the editorial appeared. I was not aware of it until this morning, when I read a question in the comment section of my previous post.

This appears to me to be a clear and very unfortunate case of plagiarism. Now.....a complicating factor:

We all know, or at least should know, that the Whig does not write all its editorials. Like most small- to medium-sized newspapers, it subscribes to an editorial service that sends it prepackaged editorial matter on national and international topics. Sometimes those materials get localized, more often they don't. So it is possible that nobody at the Whig did the actual plagiarizing.

But somebody somewhere sure did.

Nowhere in the editorial is the AP mentioned. No quotation marks are placed around the verbatim material. Jennifer Loven, the writer of the original article, is given no credit for her words.

If you did this in your high school English class, your paper would be given a "zero" and you would be sent to the principal's office.

If the lifting of the AP text was done in-house, the H-W should acknowledge its error and explain to its readers how it happened. If it was done elsewhere, the H-W should explain the sources of its editorials to its readers to correct any false impression that all the material on the Viewpoint page is locally originated. In either case, an apology is in order.

The Clue Train

...left the station an hour ago, and some folks are still in line at the ticket window.

A consulting firm from Texas now says the Washington Theater project should take $11.1 million, not a mere $8.4 million. Oh well then, let me check under my couch cushions. And the "solution" to the theater's problems involves buying out an existing business on the square, one that is actually making money and drawing people downtown.

The Oakley-Lindsay Center's Finance Committee chairman tells the Convention & Visitors Bureau that if they need money so bad, they should just go out and raise it like everyone else and not just "wait for the government checks"....the way the Oakley-Lindsay Center does. The paper on the history of the hotel-motel tax put together by the chairman, which he apparently thinks buttresses his opinion, actually shows how the hotel-motel tax has been gradually perverted over the years from being specifically dedicated to promote overnight nonresident tourism to being essentially an OLC subsidy. I can see the logic of using tax dollars to promote the city and draw in out-of-town visitors. I cannot see the logic of using tax dollars to prop up a convention center that cannot pay for itself.