A regional daily newspaper has dropped a freelance columnist over claims of “shameless” plagiarism.
The Press & Journal in Aberdeen made the decision to axe freelance writer Carly Fallon after she wrote a piece about reasons to love winter.
Journalist Stuart Heritage claimed on Twitter that parts of the article in the Press & Journal were almost identical to a column originally published by The Guardian last month, describing it as “very shameless”.
Following the complaint, Press & Journal editor Damian Bates decided he would no longer accept columns by Carly.
He said: “Obviously plagiarism – in any form – is totally unacceptable.
“I take this matter very seriously indeed and have decided that we will no longer be accepting columns from freelance writer Carly Fallon.
“I’m deeply disappointed this situation has arisen and apologise for any upset this has caused anyone.”
Stuart tweeted on Friday that he was impressed with the response from the paper’s editor, after alerting the title to his concerns.
He wrote: “A very quick email from the editor. Impressively quick, in fact. It’s being investigated.”
Stuart added that he had received sincere apologies from Damian about the incident.
A full analysis of the similarities between the two columns can be seen on Buzzfeed.
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When I was editing a daily overseas, I was alerted to a columnist’s plagiarism by a reader who had read an almost identical article in The Boston Globe in Massachusetts, USA.
I then discovered the columnist had been lifting material in its entirety (unattributed) from several American papers. She was fired on the spot, having offered no defence.
Computers enable plagiarists to cut-and-paste material to their heart’s content. Fortunately, they also offer a means to expose plagiarists for what they are – shameless cheats who feast off other people’s talent.
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Echoes an incident on the B’ham Post years ago, when the FT’s subscription dept sent a droll letter to the editor, asking if he’d like to buy the paper, rather than just allow writers to lift content from it.
The Post’s ‘profile’ on a 250-year-old firm which had just gone under, near West Brom, did indeed contain swathes of words taken from the Pink’ Un. It took less than 30 minutes for the NUJ to chat it over with the ed, for the hapless dope to confess, and he was then on his way out of the newsroom. No-one ever worked out why he’d been so blatant or so stupid.
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