Boston Globe NFL Writer suspended two months for plagiarizing Seattle NFL Writer

[bbgun]

Actually, you're not supposed to copy word for word even if you do credit the other writer. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin learned that the hard way.

 

[burmafrd]

And these are the self appointed watchdogs. The more I learn about modern journalism, the more I appreciate the relative honesty of used car salesmen.

 

[elitetrackstar]

happens tons, a picture of a professor and his wife walking a dog after a snow storm was taken for a college newspaper and was picked up by the local paper and by the end of the week it was picked up by many newspapers. Of course they gave the photographer credit...

 

[DeepBleu]

so this dude is like the second coming of jason blair?

 

[WoodysGirl]

POSTED 8:48 p.m. EST, March 5, 2007

BORGES SUSPENDED TWO MONTHS WITHOUT PAY

The Boston Globe has announced that sportswriter Ron Borges has been suspended two months for plagiarizing content from the Tacoma News-Tribune.

"'The Globe does not tolerate plagiarism,'" Globe editor Martin Baron said in a statement. "Extensive passages written by the Tacoma reporter were used verbatim in the column by Borges, and that is prohibited."

The penalty might have been more severe is the material that Borges copied had not been part of a service that is available generally to NFL writers. Here's how one industry source explained it to us: "First of all, I don't like [Borges] at all. He's an arrogant prick whose coverage of Belichick and the Patriots does a disservice to my profession. He's so freaking anti-Belichick it's absurd. That being said, don't go overboard with this plagiarism stuff. What happens is that there are two 'notes' networks among NFL reporters. What happens is we send a file each week with interesting notes and quotes to the rest of the 31 beat writers so that we can fill our NFL notes sections each Sunday. Normally you rewrite what the other writer sends you, but obviously Ron just did the old cut and paste. I'm sure Mike Sando sent Borges a file with that exact passage in it. And Sando knew it would be used in some form. Obviously this isn't journalism at its finest, but that's what we do."

 

[Mavs Man]

This reminds me of an English class I took in college where the professor gave a student an F for plagiarism.

How did she catch it? He printed the paper directly from the internet, so the link was posted at the bottom of the page.

 

[bbgun]

POSTED 8:48 p.m. EST, March 5, 2007

BORGES SUSPENDED TWO MONTHS WITHOUT PAY

The Boston Globe has announced that sportswriter Ron Borges has been suspended two months for plagiarizing content from the Tacoma News-Tribune.

"'The Globe does not tolerate plagiarism,'" Globe editor Martin Baron said in a statement. "Extensive passages written by the Tacoma reporter were used verbatim in the column by Borges, and that is prohibited."

The penalty might have been more severe is the material that Borges copied had not been part of a service that is available generally to NFL writers. Here's how one industry source explained it to us: "First of all, I don't like [Borges] at all. He's an arrogant prick whose coverage of Belichick and the Patriots does a disservice to my profession. He's so freaking anti-Belichick it's absurd. That being said, don't go overboard with this plagiarism stuff. What happens is that there are two 'notes' networks among NFL reporters. What happens is we send a file each week with interesting notes and quotes to the rest of the 31 beat writers so that we can fill our NFL notes sections each Sunday. Normally you rewrite what the other writer sends you, but obviously Ron just did the old cut and paste. I'm sure Mike Sando sent Borges a file with that exact passage in it. And Sando knew it would be used in some form. Obviously this isn't journalism at its finest, but that's what we do."

Trust me, the Globe and all of Borges' critics are going over his old columns looking for other examples of "borrowing." If they find even one more transgression, he's a goner.

 

[lspain1]

"Obviously this isn't journalism at its finest, but that's what we do."

Truer words were never spoken. I don't know this guy, but the attitude so clearly evident here pervades much more than the Boston Globe these days. I make it a point never to overestimate media competence and I'm rarely surprised. I wonder if the US has ever had an industry whose professionalism has lapsed so badly across so broad a spectrum. Plagiarism, poor work ethics, poor journalistic ethics in checking and reporting sources, "opinion" pieces aimed at agitation rather than information all combine to make an entire industry look incredibly sad. They get little respect...and they deserve none.