"Obviously, it was not intentional on my part to confuse you or anyone as a reader of our blog as in no way did I try to claim it as my original work. I just posted it. My goal was to get the information "released" to me...the "press" out to our readers as timely as possible."
GREENSBORO, NC -- The publisher of Yes! Weekly recently dismissed its editor. The reporting staff soon left too, leaving Yes! publisher Charles Womack in a tough spot. Still, desperation is no reason to resort to publishing press releases word-for-word under the publisher's name even though he did not write them.
That's plagiarism.
Here is the post on Yes! Weekly's blog attributed to publisher Charles.
Here is the press release from the City of Greensboro. They are identical.
A little stretch as it stated "posted" and not written.
ReplyDeleteThat's the only place any attribution is given to a source and it claims "Charles." Is it otherwise clear to you that someone other than Charles wrote this?
ReplyDeleteIndeed, it was a mistake on Charles' part to not note that the press release was copied and pasted.
ReplyDeleteI copy and paste press releases all the time. I hope I always remember to note proper attribution. I hope this was an unintended error and that Charles will update his post noting his mistake.
For the uninitiated, Roch is correct that this is plagiarism but Charles has broken no laws as government entities can claim no legal copyrights. But had the content been privately owned then Charles would have also committed copyright infringement which is against the law.
Full Disclosure: I have in the past committed copyright infringement of the News & Record WITH attribution only to be met with a takedown notice to which I complied. I did so because of the N&R's habit of altering online content.
Billy, it's not this once, he's been doing it for weeks now.
ReplyDeleteRoch, I appreciate the heads up. Obviously, it was not intentional on my part to confuse you or anyone as a reader of our blog as in no way did I try to claim it as my original work. I just posted it. My goal was to get the information "released" to me...the "press" out to our readers as timely as possible. Again, I appreciate the heads up and have gone thru and provided attribution. If you have any other suggestions, I'm all ears. Thanks for keeping me on my toes.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear you are amenable to making corrections, Charles. You should read the comments on your blog from time to time as this had been brought to your attention previously in the comments - I would have thought having them get approved from moderation meant that someone read them, but maybe they didn't come to your attention.
ReplyDelete