Plagiarism puts a weekly paper out of business

I've been fascinated by Slate.com music critic Jody Rosen's story, "Dude, You Stole My Article." Rosen discovered that a "Mark Williams," a writer for a small alt-weekly in Texas (its website is now down), the Montgomery County Bulletin, had plagiarized a Jimmy Buffett feature that Rosen had written. Intrigued/pissed off, Rosen decided to dig farther:

Since 2005, the Bulletin has published dozens of stories under Williams' byline that appear to be copied, whole or in part, from other periodicals. Compare the Bulletin's Nov. 4, 2005, Franz Ferdinand piece and this NME review, published five weeks prior; the Bulletin's Steely Dan piece (July 14, 2006) and this article from the Web site All About Jazz (July 4, 2006); the Bulletin's Black Rebel Motorcycle Club featureBoston Globe piece (May 25, 2007); the Bulletin's McKay Brothers articleDallas Observer item (Oct. 19, 2006); and the Bulletin's "God and Country: More Popular Artists Are Now Singing a Spiritual Tune" (Sept. 20, 2007) and the Billie Joe Shaver concert review by Washington Post pop critic J. Freedom du Lac (Sept. 13, 2007). The Eagles piece published in the Bulletin on Dec. 13, 2007 is a nearly word-for-word recapitulation of David Fricke's Rolling Stone review (Nov. 1, 2007). Mark Williams sought inspiration from USA Today for his features on Paul Simon (USA Today version; Bulletin version) and Tom Petty (USA Today version; Bulletin version). The Evanston, Ill.-based blog Pop Matters is the apparent source of articles on Dwight Yoakam (Pop Matters version; Bulletin version) and Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs (Pop Matters version; Bulletin version). And then there's "Crazy About 'Crazy' " (March 2, 2007), Williams' deconstruction of the monster 2006 pop hit by Gnarls Barkley—an article that bears a striking resemblance to "Crazy for 'Crazy'," published six months earlier in Slate.

 

Rosen spoke to the paper's editor, Mike Ladyman, but then Ladyman rabbited and went to ground. After Slate ran Rosen's feature, though, the Bulletin abruptly folded and Ladyman and WIlliams (or, as it appears, Ladyman/Williams) went on a pity-party attack, blaming Rosen for taking their/his mendacity public. From the Houston Press interview with Ladyman:

"It is a low-budget publication. Or was. It’s no longer a publication. I’m quitting. After this Slate article and this is the future of journalism in New York City [sic]. I don’t want any part of it.”

But it was "Williams"' open letter to Jody Rosen that iced this cake. It reads, in part:

It must have taken years of seasoned investigative know-how to push me off my lofty perch. It takes a dogged, intrepid journalist to expose the alleged wrongdoings of a 44-year-old college dropout who drifted from one lousy media job to another for 20 years; it takes courage to debase someone with a mouthful of cut-rate dentures who, up until 2007, lived in his parents’ home for seven years due to near-fatal bouts of clinical depression; it takes a journalist of a certain caliber to torpedo a pathetic hack who has barely squeezed out a living for nearly a decade at seven cents a word....

It is easy to make fun of our little rag, Mr. Rosen -- to call attention to the gaffes and human foibles of a couple of faceless rubes a half a nation away; but, despite your grievances with our publication, I feel that we have done some good in our corner of the world. Through our output of articles over the years, we kept a hateful rogue element of the local Republican Party from taking control of our county library system and ripping the Constitution to shreds; we have reported unblinkingly on the troubled plight of illegal aliens living in our area; we have stood face-to-face with members of the Ku Klux Klan to question their ideological inconsistencies; and we touched the heart of a killer who turned himself in after reading an article in our publication on his victim, who, for years, struggled with alcoholism and the estrangement it caused with his family. In short, we have called attention to a great number of injustices in our crappy little town, both great and small.

So there it is, Mr. Rosen -- congratulations on breaking an already fragile soul. In the end, I’m not sure what the point of all of this truly is, other than some sort of small dully colored feather in your journalistic cap. We bow to you, Mr. Rosen -- to your talent, to your humanity, to all that is you.

Hey, Jody Rosen: nice feather, man.

Comments

[Jil]

That letter simply ... well, boggles.

[Lizzy Caston]

Looks like another case of a lazy editor and publisher and a crack stupid lying writer who finally got caught in a web of thievery. Sad and pathetic.

Good for Rosen and Slate for exposing this crap for what it is; theft and lack of journalistic integrity.

Note to Wiiliams: just because you suffer from depression and dental problems and professional woes and money issues doesn't mean it is ok to plagerize. Your paper went down because you helped it go down.

Note to Ladyman: You are an idiot.

Note to both Ladyman and Williams: there's a liitle thing called journalistic ethics. Ever heard of them?

[New Orleans Ladder]

I heard this story twice on NPR (I think On the media) wit'phone tape from da'Mxr. Williams. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Da'Rosen Knows!

I was lookin'fo just the reason to hang this on da'Ladda --and herah you ara!
No matta where ya'goin...

Thanks Kevin,
Editilla~New Orleans Ladder

[Jil]

I forgot about this ... years and years ago, I was writing pieces for a magazine that went out to various car clubs.

One day, I was looking through another club's magazine, and there was one of my stories -- printed verbatim, but with another writer's name in the byline.

The editor and I contacted the editor of that magazine and made him aware of the issue. He apologized, said that the writer (a club member, not a professional) didn't realize it was wrong, and said it wouldn't happen again.

In the following issue of our magazine, we ran a short statement saying that all stories were copyrighted and that you couldn't rerun them without permission.

We got a nasty letter from the editor, who said that since it was obviously aimed at him, we were "harassing" him, and if we didn't stop, he would look into legal action...

[Matt Bors]

If I battle the KKK and touch the heart of a killer (figuratively) can I plagiarize too?

I also enjoy the line tying excuses for plagiarism with how long you lived in your parents basement.

[Texas Triffid Ranch]

Oh, my heart bleeds for poor "Mark Williams". Eight years back, I was editing an online magazine intended to be a supplement and augmentation to the publisher's three other publications, and discovered one day that one of my reviewers was plagiarizing reviews from others. She wasn't even doing a good job of it, because as soon as she'd get fired from one venue, as I did, she'd promptly offer the same plagiarized reviews to another, apparently so that she'd continue to get free books and DVDs.

Well, when I confronted her with the evidence, she promptly threw a similar tantrum with similar pity lines: she admitted that she'd "paraphrased" her reviews, but that was because she so desperately wanted to let the world know how good these books were. See, she was on disability in New York (which was why she wrote for so many venues for free, because she'd get cut off if she made more than $100 per month from writing), and she really needed to review those books (because apparently she was supplementing those disability checks by selling the books and DVDs she received), and I was being completely unfair in judging her when she was in such a horrible way (to the point of plagiarizing reviews because there was no way in Hell that she could have reviewed all of those books on her own). For the next three or four years, long after I'd quit, I'd get letters from other editors asking about her: even though I'd fired her, and she knew that I wouldn't keep this a secret, she still used me as a reference. After about 2004, I think she finally caught on that my reviews of her work were both original and rather blistering.

[Ajf 6]

The hope of green fields, we yearn for the dream!