The J junkie

Thanks to Poynter, I found out about Jody Rosen’s discovery that her article (and many others’) had been grossly plagiarized by a Texas alt weekly. Articles under the Mark Williams byline in the Montgomery County Bulletin turned out to be mere collages of several other articles (not his work) in other publications. Rosen’s expose is quite edifying.

But there’s more revelation at the bottom of Rosen’s column (also pointed out by Poynter and Jeff Jarvis):

But perhaps the Bulletin is merely on-trend—or even ahead of its time. The Drudge Report, the Huffington Post, and Real Clear Politics have made names and money by sifting through RSS feeds; Tina Brown and Barry Diller are preparing the launch of their own news aggregator. Mike Ladyman and company may simply be bringing guerilla-style 21^st-century content aggregation to 20^th-century print media: publishing the Napster of newspapers.

Wow. Frankly, as a blogger I’m offended that the editorial work of linking and aggregating (and, by the way, sending traffic your way Jody) is compared to the gross practice of slapping one’s name on somebody else’s work and passing it as one’s own. Ouch. I expected this from The Associated Press, not from Slate.

That’s just one paragraph too many (that’s already angered at least one blogger) in an otherwise edifying exposé, which I will link to (er, plagiarize) here again. Just ‘coz.