We’re going down the plagiarism road again, and unfortunately, this is a situation that happens all too often these days in the day of aggregation.
On Tuesday, Philadelphia Daily News Phillies beat writer Ryan Lawrence posted a column about a potential Jonathan Papelbon trade to the Milwaukee Brewers. In the column, Lawrence included some details about Papelbon’s no-trade clause and vesting option for 2016.
A few hours later on NJ.com, Matt Lombardo posted about the Papelbon-Brewers trade and directly lifted Lawrence’s paragraph about the no-trade clause and vesting option. Lawrence noticed, and called Lombardo out on Twitter that evening.
Hey @MattLombardo975, how about NOT lifting sentences from my story & using them as your own? http://t.co/iq7O0QT2Ah http://t.co/hKqxXgf3pg
— Ryan Lawrence (@ryanlawrence21) January 27, 2015
The article eventually got edited to include Lawrence’s paragraph in a block quote with a link and credit to Lawrence, but in the original post by Lombardo, there was to mention of Lawrence and no quote of his work. Crossing Broad grabbed a screencap before Lombardo’s column was edited.
Also, here’s a comparison between Lawrence’s column and Lombardo’s, pre-edit.
If you're not into clicking on links, he's a screen shot of third to last graf in my story…. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/PYJAdxsgNL
— Ryan Lawrence (@ryanlawrence21) January 27, 2015
….and the second to last graf in his. (2/2) pic.twitter.com/xJZBfiPd1X
— Ryan Lawrence (@ryanlawrence21) January 27, 2015
Lombardo’s column stood in its plagiarized state for nearly nine hours before being edited to credit Lawrence and quote his work.
And here we are. Quoting sources happens all the time – we do it here at AA, and I also do it over at The Outside Corner. However, if you’re going to quote someone else’s work, you need to let readers know that it’s a quote and not your work by signifying the source and throwing a link to that source up.
Lombardo didn’t initially do that, and the way his column was set up indicates to me that this wasn’t just an honest mistake of forgetting to add in the blockquote tags. I think what really rubs me the wrong way about this situation is the lack of acknowledgement in Lombardo’s article. There’s no editor’s note to mention an edit in any way, just an “updated” note in the heading.
This is an ugly situation that probably ends up happening more than we all realize. It’s sad that Lombardo felt the need to simply copy and paste Lawrence’s information instead of rewriting it himself – it’s not like it would have taken much effort. And it also wouldn’t have taken much effort to credit Lawrence like he ended up doing nine hours later. It’s not a good look, especially when the issue could have been so easily avoided.
