A few weeks ago, I read with disgust that humor/travel writer Dave Fox discovered an editor at a Midwestern newspaper, Jon Flatland, had been plagiarizing his writing and the writing of many other writers.
I write a weekly humor column myself, for several newspapers in Southern California. I also post it here on the "Wa" blog, and I got curious. So I did what Fox had done—I began to Google unique phrases from my own online columns to see if anyone had been plagiarizing me.
How does the saying go? Don't start looking if you are not prepared for what you might find?
In a bizarre repetition of Fox's discovery, I too found I had been plagiarized by an editor. In May 2011, Steve Jeffrey, the editor/publisher of a community weekly called "The Anchor" in Chestermere, Alberta, a suburb of Calgary, passed off my writing as his own. My column, but printed under his name and smiling photo.
Apparently we humor columnists are closet investigative journalists, because like Dave Fox, I began to dig deeper.
"The
Anchor" has online archives which go back a year. I searched 52 issues
using the same process, and I discovered that I was not the only writer whose
work Jeffrey was using under his own byline in his weekly column, "Sittin'
in the Lighthouse." In all, I found 41 evidently plagiarized columns by 14
different humor writers in the past 12 months.
I
say "evidently" only because I have not communicated with all 13 of
the other writers yet, so I do not frankly know if they each sold their writing
to Mr. Jeffrey with the understanding that, as part of the deal, he would be
posting it under his own name and photo.
It
seems, to be charitable, unlikely, however. I certainly made no such deal.
(To
be entirely accurate, there were 42 instances when Jeffrey's "Lighthouse" column used content from sources
not his own, not 41. But on June 23 and October 27 of 2011, for some reason, he
printed the same co-opted column.)
According
to his bio, Jeffrey has been publishing "The Anchor" since 2000. I
did not have access to "The Anchor" print archives prior to March
2011, so I do not know whether this evident plagiarism jag began suddenly last
March or existed before.
But wasn't it Sigmund Freud, or Dr. Laura, who said "The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior"? I am not speculating, mind you. Forty-two smoking guns is enough for this cowboy.
But wasn't it Sigmund Freud, or Dr. Laura, who said "The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior"? I am not speculating, mind you. Forty-two smoking guns is enough for this cowboy.
I
did not contact Mr. Jeffrey to ask him how my column, "Sick of
standardized Testing? Bubble THIS in," ended up printed under his name and
photo in "The Anchor" on May 19, 2011.
I
did not contact him to ask why 25 of my friend Sheila Moss's columns ended up
under his name and photo in "The Anchor." Or the columns of 12 other
humor writers who range geographically from Newfoundland to Australia.
Perhaps someone in the media who is, unlike me, an actual investigative
journalist will ask him that.
The
most bizarre thing to me is that an editor would be unwilling to pay the $10-20
most humor columnists would charge a publication of this size (10,000
circulation) for a column.
I cannot understand how Mr. Jeffrey came to conclude that that was money worth saving.
My wife teaches high school English. When one of her students is caught plagiarizing, he is given a stern warning about ethics and the concept of "original thought." If that same student is caught a second time, he is dropped from the class cold, with an "F" on his permanent record.
I cannot understand how Mr. Jeffrey came to conclude that that was money worth saving.
My wife teaches high school English. When one of her students is caught plagiarizing, he is given a stern warning about ethics and the concept of "original thought." If that same student is caught a second time, he is dropped from the class cold, with an "F" on his permanent record.
I have to wonder what punishment somebody who plagiarizes 42 times deserves.
. . .
Below are just a few sample paragraphs comparing the original material by my fellow humor writers and the material appearing in "The Anchor" in the past year.
[Update: this column was posted at 6 a.m. Pacific on March 26, 2012. The "Anchor" back issue archives, which are linked below, were removed from public view around 7 a.m. I have, of course, backup copies on file.—George]
Original
column from me, here at The Wa Blog, "Sick of standardized testing? Bubble
THIS in," posted originally Jan. 15, 2008:
"My kids, before their schooling is done and they begin their inevitable careers as underpaid but highly esteemed bloggers, will have endured, at a minimum, the STAR test, CAT/6, SAT, CAHSEE, and quite possibly the TACHS, COOP, SSAT, ISEE, SHSAT, the FAB 4 and the Dave Clark 5."
From
Steve Jeffrey's "Sittin' in the Lighthouse" column in "The
Anchor," May 19, 2011:
"My kids, before their schooling is done and they begin their inevitable careers as underpaid but highly esteemed bloggers, will have endured, at a minimum, the STAR test, CAT/6, SAT, CAHSEE, and quite possibly the TACHS, COOP, SSAT, ISEE, SHSAT, the FAB 4 and the Dave Clark 5."
. . .
Original
column from Sheila Moss, Humorcolumnist.com, "OED Says OMG, FYI, LOL
OK," copyright 2011:
From
Steve Jeffrey's "Sittin' in the Lighthouse" column in "The
Anchor," March 31, 2011:
"We tweet on Twitter, but tweets are tweets, not twits, which are still very foolish people. Of course, that could all change the next time the OED is updated. Maybe FYI, OMG, and LOL are not so bad after all."
. . .
Original
column from Peter Chianca, chianca-at-large.com, "Don't let the door hit
you on the way in," February 3, 2000:
"While it may sound like a difficult thing to do, even accidentally, I actually have an illustrious history of hitting myself in the head with car doors and yet, somehow, I am still surprised every time that metal door frame caroms off my temple. You'd think I'd be used to it by now."
From
Steve Jeffrey's "Sittin' in the Lighthouse" column in "The
Anchor," May 12, 2011:
"While it may sound like a difficult thing to do, even accidentally, I actually have an illustrious history of hitting myself in the head with car doors and yet, somehow, I am still surprised every time that metal door frame caroms off my temple. You'd think I'd be used to it by now."
Although those examples are from 2011, this
is not something which stopped awhile back. Readers of last Thursday's
(March 22, 2012) "Anchor" will discover the text of Sheila Moss's column "It's a social media world" in
Mr. Jeffrey's "Lighthouse" column.
I will not post all 42 links here for comparison. Each one is basically as similar as the three above, although Jeffrey did occasionally change a few words in some columns to make certain references local to Canada and the like.
But
just so you know I am not making that number, 42, up—last week, anticipating
that the links to the archive of back "Anchor" issues might not be up
long after this story appeared, I sent the list of comparison links to Andrew Beaujon at Poynter.org.
I
wanted a pair of independent, professional-journalist eyes to verify my
findings. (See Poynter today for Andrew's own article on this topic.)
But
here, at least for as long as the links are still live, are comparisons between
content from the other 11 writers involved and content from "Sittin' in
the Lighthouse" in "The Anchor" over the last year:
[Update: this column was posted at 6 a.m. Pacific on March 26, 2012. The "Anchor" back issue archives, which are linked below, were removed from public view around 7 a.m. I have, of course, backup copies on file.—George]
Russell Wangersky: "Gone fishin,'" The Telegram (St. John's, Newfoundland), July 5, 2008:
Steve Jeffrey's version, June 9, 2011:
. . .
Man Martin, SouthernHumorists.com, "Home Repair":
Steve
Jeffrey's version, June 16, 2011:
. . .
Joe Lavin, "Step away from the Internet," joelavin.com, Sept. 13, 2005:
Steve
Jeffrey's version, June 23, 2011:
. . .
John Brock, "Blue tooth technology enters my limited world of modernity," The Southern Observer, January 9, 2008:
Steve
Jeffrey's version, June 30, 2011:
. . .
John Martin, "Rebel with a pause," dunno.com, Sept. 10, 2002:
Steve
Jeffrey's version, July 7, 2011:
. . .
Jason Love, "So it goes - driving," Foolish Times, June 1, 2009:
Steve
Jeffrey's version, July 14, 2011:
. . .
Erik Deckers, "Which part of No don't you understand?" Laughing Stalk, 2003:
Steve
Jeffrey's version, August 25, 2011:
(Poor Erik. He was already plagiarized by Jon Flatland, and now this. I guess this is what you call, um, "broad appeal"?)
. . .
Ed Smith, "One born every minute," The Telegram (St. John's, Newfoundland), July 19, 2008:
Steve
Jeffrey's version, Sept. 1, 2011:
. . .
Laura B. Randolph, "The spirit of crassness," Ebony magazine, Jan. 1995
Steve Jeffrey's version, Dec. 15, 2011:
. . .
Daron Williams, The Collegiate Times (Virginia Tech), "Dare to wish someone a Merry Christmas," Dec. 8, 2008:
Steve
Jeffrey's version, Dec. 22, 2011:
. . .
Bill Westcott, NL News, "Long live our weekly and monthly newspapers," March 4, 2008:
Steve
Jeffrey's version, Jan. 19, 2012:
. . .
Several friends have suggested I should be flattered that somebody considered my writing worth stealing. It's a joke. I get it. But here's the thing—usually after an editor publishes the writing I spent days crafting, writing that is printed with my own name on it, he pays me.
That is really all the flattery I need.
George
Waters
