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How Google Caught a Plagiarizing Newspaper Editor and Ended His Career

I’m baffled at the fact that, when we live in a day and age where you can find anything — anything! — on Google, people will still try to plagiarize and steal your stuff.

It just happened to me yesterday, when I was alerted by a fellow humor writer, Dave Fox, that 28-year newspaper veteran, Jon Flatland, had stolen at least two of my past humor columns, word for word, and passed them off as his own.

To make matters worse, Flatland had done the same to Dave and four other writers, including a friend of mine.

Flatland didn’t just paraphrase our ideas, or copy a joke or two. He copied-and-pasted entire columns, changed a couple of details, like replacing his wife’s name for my wife’s, or changing the name of a city where an event took place.

Dave immediately got in touch with the publisher, as well as a state newspaper association who had given the writer an award for best humor last year (I’d love to know whose columns actually won the award for him).

One of the writers also called Flatland up and confronted him. Flatland said he didn’t believe he had plagiarized, but that he had found the stories in an old folder, thought he had written them, and published them as his own.

I’m not buying it. One of my stolen stories, ‘Twas the Month Before Christmas, was written in the exact same rhythm and rhyming pattern as the original Night Before Christmas. You don’t forget writing something like that, as much as I’ve tried.

Apparently Flatland knew something was about to hit the fan, because he sent an email of resignation to the publisher — admitting to only one column, even though we have proof of eight — and was gone before the publisher ever got into work. The publisher has since removed all of Flatland’s columns, and has notified his state’s newspaper association about the incident, blackballing Flatland and preventing him from working in newspapers ever again.

That all went down yesterday. I heard about it at 11:30 am, and by 11 pm, it was done. A career died in less than 12 hours.

What’s sad about this is Flatland was a 28 year veteran of the industry. He’s someone who knew better. He was one of the people who was supposed to teach young writers all about journalistic ethics. Flatland has had a long and impressive career in the community newspaper business, and has been the president of at least two state newspaper associations. So his name has carried a little weight in his corner of the world.

And he ended his career in disgrace, because he violated the one rule, the one foundational principle, the entire media business is built on: don’t steal someone else’s shit. In fact, Rule No. 9 on the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics is never plagiarize.

I feel sympathy for Flatland. His career has ended in the most embarrassing manner possible. Former colleagues and association members will be talking about him, shocked that he would do the one thing that journalists are never, ever supposed to do.

But what makes it so stupid and senseless is that WE CAN FIND THESE THINGS OUT! Holy sweet jebus, it’s so freaking easy to find anything on the Internet! There are entire companies that have built multi-billion dollar empires by making it possible to do exactly that.

Want to see Portlandia’s “Put a Bird On It” video? Google it.

Want the lyrics to Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida? Google it.

Want to see if a phrase you used in a humor column in 2006 has been used anywhere else? Google. It.

Enter a unique or uncommon phrase from one of your posts or columns, and put quotes around it. That tells Google to look for exactly that phrase, with all those words, in that particular order.

If the phrase, along with most of your words other words, shows up without your name on it, it was stolen. If it doesn’t, it wasn’t.

It truly is that easy. And why Flatland didn’t know that or couldn’t figure it out is probably the most staggeringly disappointing part of this whole mess. He didn’t think he would get caught. He didn’t think that people might/could/would look to see if any of their stuff was appearing anywhere that it shouldn’t be.

And now, because Flatland didn’t know that one basic fact — that, and he’s a column-stealing thief who benefitted financially from my years of hard work, while I got nothing — he’s ended his career in the worst possible way, ensuring he’s never going to work in that industry again.

If you get nothing else from this column, please burn these two lessons into your memory forever.

First, don’t steal people’s work.

Second, if you do steal, please know that there are giant f—ing search engines that will find you out, no matter what tiny part of the globe you’re in.

Just write your own stuff, or don’t turn it in at all.

Photo credit: Adam Thomas (Flickr)

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Some Bloggers Are Journalists. Get Over It

Should journalists be licensed? Should they be given some sort of special card that says they have undergone the rigorous training necessary to objectively report the news, and thus be given special access to government officials, sporting events, and other newsworthy goings-on?

Christine St-Pierre, Quebec’s culture minister, believes so. She is creating a plan for “a new model of regulation of Quebec media.”

In other words, she wants the government to determine who is worthy of being a “journalist,” and thus excluding people who don’t work for traditional media outlets.

As in, not bloggers.

It’s a familiar refrain: newspaper writers and other big-J Journalists don’t like bloggers. We’re not real journalists, they say. We haven’t had the education or training. We’re not held to the same rigorous editing and writing standards that they are. And so, this makes them the arbiter of deciding what is real journalism and what isn’t.

Australian writer and web developer Aaron Holesgrove echoes St-Pierre’s sentiments, claiming some moral high ground that bloggers may not occupy, simply because we don’t work for newspapers or TV stations.

We’re not objective. We present opinion as fact. We use anonymous sources.

I guess in that sense, most cable news stations aren’t journalism either. Neither Keith Olberman and Sean Hannity are objective, and both present opinion as fact. And as far as anonymous sources go, I see them quoted in news articles all the time. They’re the ones called “someone familiar with the facts” or “someone not at liberty to speak to the media.”

But there are plenty of bloggers who report the news objectively. They report on nothing but facts. They don’t use anonymous sources any more than the real newspapers. And when it comes to writing and editing, they’re the masters of their craft.

The American Reporter is an online-only newspaper that, by the strictest definition, could be considered a blog. They’re the first Internet-only newspaper, as well as the largest online alternative newspaper. But they’re a newspaper first, and a blog second. So what does that make them? (Full disclosure: I’ve been their humor columnist since 1997.)

Apparently You Lose Your Journalism Card When You Go Online

So what’s the deciding factor between a journalist and an online hack who is looked down upon by the very people he seeks to emulate? Is it the writer’s employer? Are we journalists because we’re paid by newspapers and TV stations? Are we non-journalists because we’re freelancers and free writers? Is it our education, or lack thereof? And what about the people who used to be journalists but aren’t any longer?

There are plenty of examples here in Central Indiana of people who took their work from the print and broadcast world to the online world. They were laid off or removed from their positions, found a home online, and became bloggers.

Ruth Holladay, former firecracker columnist for the Indianapolis Star has held her former employer’s feet to the fire for more than four years now on her own blog. Paul Poteet is a former meteorologist for WRTV, the local ABC affiliate, and found a second home online, parlaying his TV celebrityship into an online presence most of us would kill for.

But neither of them work for the large media conglomerates that once employed them. Does that mean that they are no longer worthy of the term “journalist?” Did Ruth have to hand in her journalist card when she started publishing her words online? Did Paul get suddenly struck stupid, and no longer able to read a weather map, when he left his TV station?

On the national scale, a couple years ago the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Denver Times became online-only newspapers. The P-I folded their print edition and went online only, while the Denver Times was born out of the ashes of the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News.

No one would (seriously and credibly) argue that these two newspapers are no longer journalistic sources just because they are online-only. And yet, there are people who will say that Holladay and Poteet are no longer journalists because they’re not employed by large media conglomerates.

So where does that line get drawn? I’m a professional blogger, but I’ve published a newspaper column for nearly 18 years. Am I only a journalist when my words appear on dead trees? Or do I carry that mantle and responsibility in every kind of writing, including here?

Bloggers Are the Pamphleteers of Old

Back in the 1700s, pamphleteers were those people who wanted to express their opinions to a large group of people, and did so in their own proprietary platform. Today’s bloggers are yesterday’s pamphleteers — we don’t have access to the machines or process to broadcast our opinions via mass media, but we do have the communication channels through WordPress, Blogger, Posterous, and about 40 other blog platforms.

We use blogs to express our opinions and stories, the same way Thomas Paine expressed his support for the Americans during the Revolutionary War.

Is blogging messy? Yes.

Is it prone to misuse and abuse? Of course.

Do we make mistakes or go overboard in our opinions? You bet.

I see the same thing from professional journalists too. Slanted news stories, over-hyping and sensationalizing news (and weather!), and even plagiarism and fabrication (anyone remember Jayson Blair?).

Still, I think journalists hold themselves to their self-imposed standards, while most bloggers do not. That’s what makes journalism an institution to be trusted as reporter and watchdog. But if bloggers want to be taken seriously as a form of communication, we need to step up and start following those practices as well.

In the meantime, you big-J journalists, blogging isn’t going to go away. No matter how much you deride the form, it’s only getting bigger and more powerful. You know what’s going away? Print media. You have a choice. Teach us how to do it right, teach us how to do it well, so you have a place to land when your employer figures out that two 20-somethings can do your job for a fraction of your salary.

To paraphrase an old quote by writer Rex Huppke, “It’s funny when journalists mock (blogging). It’s also funny when people about to be eaten by a bear mock the bear.”

Bloggers who want to be journalists need to step up their game. Journalists who are destined to be bloggers need to get over themselves. Because one day, just like newspapers replaced pamphleteers, blogging is going to do the same thing to the newspapers.

Photo credit: Manin The Moon (Flickr)

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The Newspaper Industry Isn’t in a Position to Sneer at the Blogosphere

The Indianapolis Star just suffered another round of layoffs this week, losing 81 jobs to Gannett’s ineptitude and bean counting. Of these cuts, 26 of them were in the newsroom — including 8 reporters and 12 editors — and 19 were unfilled jobs, all made in the name of budgetary concerns and profitability. The cuts were part of Gannett’s larger bloodletting of 700 employees nationwide.

Meanwhile, their CEO raked in $9.4 million in 2010, doubling his pay from 2009, including a $1.75 million blood moneybonus that was partly a result of his “restructuring costs and creating efficiencies.” Translation: ruin the lives of 700 people, and we’ll give you their salaries.

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Believe me, even though I’ve called for more citizen journalism — and this is exactly why — I have complete sympathy for the Star employees who just lost their livelihood because Gannett wasn’t making enough of a profit. I worry about them and their families. Gannett seems to excel at accounting and numbers, but they suck at news reporting and suffer from a complete lack of understanding of community. Where Indianapolis readers see stories and personalities, Gannett sees dollar signs.

But Bobby King, president of the Indianapolis Newspaper Guild, managed to throw a damper on my sympathies stick his thumb in my eye with this line from his latest blog post.

So, the answer that Star publisher Karen Crotchfelt came up with was to gut suburban coverage, eliminate an entire layer of copy editors (that last line of defense which separates us from the animals in the blogosphere) and make a nip here and a tuck there to reduce expenses.

Animals in the blogosphere?

The one thing I can’t stand from journalists is the way they look down on bloggers with this sense of smug superiority. Look, you guys don’t have any special knowledge or skills that any other writer can’t get. You have editors who save you from misspellings and continuity issues. Without them, you’re no better than we are. You print your words on dead trees, we print ours on a free software platform. Your printers cost millions of dollars, and without them, you’re dead in the water. I run my entire corporate blogging business on a $1,000 laptop, and if it breaks, I can get another one and never miss a beat. Our industry is growing, yours is shrinking.

If journalists want to survive this, they’ll quit looking down on the blogosphere as the gathering of the great unwashed and recognize it’s the future of news. They’ll quit acting like the crew of the Titanic and sneering, “ew, a rescue boat? How droll.”

Look, Bobby, I know you’re pissed, and scared, and are watching the dismantling of a once-great newspaper by some clueless nimrod 1,000 miles away. But don’t attack bloggers or refer to us as animals. Sure, we didn’t go to J-school or spend 20 years honing our craft. But blogging is more than 15 years old, and there are some bloggers who can outwrite most newspaper reporters. Hell, a lot of reporters and columnists have found a new career and a new voice as a blogger. (And it wasn’t lost on me that your “animal” comment was made on a blog.) But these former journalists are the ones who make blogging better.

So you can sneer at bloggers all you want, but we’re going to be here for a long time. You can look down on us, or you can join us.

Photo credit: evelynyll (Flickr)

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Inc. Magazine is NOT Charging You to Write Their Story

Hi Erik, this is Ken Lehman of Winning Workplace. You wrote that blog post about Inc. Magazine’s Top Small Company Workplaces.

Uh-oh.

I recognized the company name, even if I didn’t recognize Ken’s name.

Ken had read my blog post where I questioned the ethics of Inc. Magazine’s Top Small Company Workplaces story, and the fact that they were charging $149 for the application review just to be considered for the TSCW review.

Turns out I was barking up the wrong tree. And I have to thank Ken for patiently, and kindly, setting the record straight. Here’s what he told me:

Winning Workplaces is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded by his family in 2001. They were the Fel-Pro family, a business that was started and run by his family for more than 80 years, before they were sold.

Winning Workplaces was created to help small and mid-sized enterprises to become great places to work. They have done this project for 8 years. This is their 9th year for the award.

2010 was the first year Inc. was their media partner. Prior to that, they worked with the Wall Street Journal, and prior to that with Fortune Small Business.

In other words, Winning Workplaces gives the awards, and they have a relationship for Inc. Magazine to write the article. From there, other journalists pick it up, and it gets published in other news outlets.

The fees that are assessed — and they didn’t assess for the first several years — are paid to Winning Workplaces, not to Inc. They are nominal and cover the administrative costs to do the project. They are not any kind of editorial or advertorial, as I had previously thought. No one needs to apply without seeing the application first, and on the website, you can preview the application before you put any money up.

Winning Workplaces is made up of a small staff and his family has put a lot of money into the project over the years. Ken doesn’t even get paid for this. He does it for the satisfaction of helping other companies.

Ken said that the people who complete the application will often tell Winning Workplaces that the process is very instructive to their own businesses, and it helps them think about their workplaces differently. It gives them ideas about how they can improve themselves, regardless of whether they win, become a finalist, or even miss the first cut.

This year, they have 28 people lined up to do the initial reviewing and screening. Some of them volunteer, and others get paid nominal amounts to follow their whole methodology to do it. That’s where the money goes, not to Inc. Magazine.

When Ken’s family started Winning Workplaces, they did it because there was no recognition project for smaller organizations. In the 90s, when Ken was working for Fel-Pro, they made Forbes list of one of the good places to work in America. And when Fortune magazine started its 100 best companies to work for list, Fel-Pro was #4. When Fel-Pro was sold in 1998, one of the things they did was to share what they had learned with others, so they hit upon starting an organization. That’s where WW came from.

However, in 2000, Fortune Magazine stopped accepting applications from companies under 1,000 employees, and there was nowhere for smaller companies to go for this kind of recognition. That’s where the Top Small Company Workplaces project came from.

Since that time, it has proliferated, and there are now a number of recognition projects and lists around the country.

But — and this is where Winning Workplaces is different — theirs is the only ones where you can win once. Then you go into their hall of fame, and you can’t repeat.

Everyone else, on the other hand, has a business model where they sell their feedback to help companies move up the list, and earn a higher number, or at least to not fall off the list. In other words, companies will “sell” you consulting to keep you on the list; Winning Workplaces purposely avoids that kind of contamination.

So, having learned all that from Ken Lehman, I can see how the Top Small Company Workplaces award is actually worthwhile and beneficial to companies. I have to say a special thank you to Ken for calling me and setting me straight.

And now I want to enter the contest myself. But since we just moved into our new space 2 days ago (and we’re sharing it), I don’t know that we qualify.

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Five Online Monetization Ideas for Newspapers

BIg-city newspapers that are still relying on ad sales and subscriptions to pay for their giant printing presses and related salaries are only delaying the inevitable closure of said newspaper. (Dailies in smaller cities and the small-town weeklies still seem to be doing well, since they cover local news, which the big city papers are ignoring.)

Newspapers need to realize ink on paper is not the only way to deliver news.

But if the big city newspapers were to start rethinking their content delivery methods, they might be able to start generating some additional income. Here are five ideas newspapers could use to increase readership and grow revenue.

1. Hop On The Mobile Bandwagon

Earlier this month, Mashable reported on a survey that said:

U.S. smartphone owners are increasingly turning to mobile to access breaking news over other media, including newspapers, TV and desktop web browsers.

In a survey of 300,000 mobile consumers, 88% of whom owned a device running one the five most popular smartphone operating systems, more than 30% said that mobile is the “most important medium” to access breaking news, narrowly followed by desktop web browsers (29%), television (21%) and newspapers (3%).

That’s because online news is beating traditional media to breaking the news.

If a story breaks at 10:17 in the morning, I could watch it on the noon news (except I’m at the office), the 5:00 news (except I’m in the car), the 6:00 news (but I’m eating dinner), or the 11:00 news (13 hours later). I could also read about it in the newspaper at 6:30 am, 20 hours later.

Or I could read about it on my mobile phone by 10:18.

A lot of newspapers are still struggling with website-based delivery, and people have already moved on to the next channel. The newspapers that adopt a breaking news strategy with their online content can get additional readers via their mobile sites, and sell ad space on those sites.

2. Create Tablet-Only Content

iPad-owning newshounds all clapped their hands and went “squeeeeeee!” when they heard News Corp. was launching an iPad-only newspaper. The version costs $.99 per edition, and will come out on a daily basis. Murdoch hopes to win just 5% of the 40 million iPad owners (2 million people), which at $.99 per edition is $2 million per day.

While a local paper is going to have trouble drawing in 2 million readers on tablets, they should start exploring the possibility of a tablet-based news delivery system. Whether it’s audio and video content (see below) that’s playable on a tablet, tablet-only stories, or even an entire publication dedicated to tablets, the explosive growth of tablets mean that newspapers need to pay attention to a possible new delivery method.

3. Use Video and Audio Podcasts

I’ve been trying out Stitcher lately, a podcast delivery app for my Android. I plug it into the AUX jack on my car, and listen to whatever I’ve selected — a couple of short podcasts from Indiana University, and the Paul & Tom Show (Paul Poteet and Tom Davis).

This got me to thinking: I would love to hear a daily 15- or even 30-minute regional news broadcast. The closest I can get is the 9 minutes my local NPR station devotes to city news, including the 5 minutes they devote to the Indiana business news program.

So who says newspapers have to report news on paper? Why can’t they create video and audio content?

What if a newspaper started producing audio content where they did 15 or 30 minute daily news programs available via Stitcher or iTunes or another mobile delivery system? Drop in three commercial slots, and treat it like a real news program. Devote as much or as little time to a story as you want, so if a program runs 5 minutes long, that’s fine. There are no restraints on a podcast length the same way there are with a radio show, so running long or running short by a couple minutes is no big deal.

The Indianapolis Star will occasionally do online news videos to supplement their stories. I would love to see more papers doing this as well, especially if the videos are optimized for mobile use. With a good digital camera and a green screen backdrop, newspapers could start generating news videos for less than a one-time cost of $10,000, and give their news interns and new writers something to do. Sell ad space before and after each video, with a corresponding ad on the web page’s sidebar.

4. Locally-Produced Content

My friend, Bob, was the digital editor for the Indy Star a few years ago. They hired local bloggers to write stories about their communities and neighborhoods for online consumption. They paid $5 per post at 3 posts per week, and sold ad space for the locally-produced blogs. The digital version made $1 million per year.

This had several benefits for the paper:

  • Hyperlocal content that appealed to people in those areas of town. The regular print paper didn’t have room these posts, but they were still able to reach readers
  • Readers who wanted to read the local content were directed to the online paper, which helped them sell more ads.
  • The paper didn’t have to pay full-time writers to write the articles. Even at $25,000 for a fresh-out-of-college writer, that’s still $12.50 per hour. And it would take 1 – 3 hours to write a 300 word article. By paying a local blogger $5 per post, they’re saving anywhere from $7.50 – $32.50 per article.

5. Targeted Ads a la Facebook and Google AdWords

This falls under the Technology I’d Like To See heading: If I read an online newspaper, I would be willing to provide them with basic information about my name, age, where I live, etc., so they can deliver targeted ads to me based on my demographics, like Facebook does. However, I would also like to see ads based on the stories I’m reading, like Google’s AdWords and Pay Per Click, which they currently do.

But what would be really cool is to deliver ads to me that are a combination of both my demographics and the stories I’m reading.

For example, if I’m reading a story about a fire in another part of town, there are any number of ads that could be served up: fire insurance, fire protection, alarm systems, document storage, etc. But the paper would also know that I’m a father of three and have my own home, so they may serve up ads about alarm systems, knowing that I’m most likely to be concerned about my family’s safety (and that I already have insurance as a home owner). But someone who is single and living in an apartment may receive an ad about fire insurance or document storage, and not see the same “protect your family” ad. Reading a story about the car industry may show me an ad for a new family-friendly car, while the single 20-something is going to get an ad for the sports car.

While some newspapers are using one or two of these ideas, not every newspaper is doing so, and not every idea is in use at this time. But if newspapers want to survive this continued downward spiral, they’ll start looking to the Internet as their new delivery system now, rather than 10 years from now, when a new young upstart has taken their place, and begun delivering the online content that people have been looking for.

My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available on Amazon.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy.

Photo credit: Thomas Hawk (Flickr)

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Your Blog Openings Suck: Four Blog Leads to Avoid

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last three weeks, you know about the two big gamma ray emitting bubbles that US astronomers found at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

No you don’t. That’s just stupid.

I hate it when blog posts start out with the overused phrase “unless you’ve been living under a rock” followed up by some assumption that “everyone” knows about this, except for hermits and Tom Hanks’ character from Cast Away.

BLEAH!!!

The problem is that because we don’t all read the same newspapers and blogs (I had to search to find something to put into this opening, because even I didn’t know about the gamma ray bubbles), we all have different sets of knowledge. The best thing to do is to assume your audience doesn’t know. “Write for the person who just woke up out of a coma,” my journalism professor used to say.

The writer who uses this opening is making a dangerous assumption that a) everyone knows what he or she knows, and b) their readers won’t find it insulting that they didn’t know this.

Here are four openings you should avoid in your blog posts, because they’re overused, insulting, or not enjoyable to read.

1. The Rock/Cave Dweller

I’ve already ranted about this, so I don’t need to go into it anymore, other than to say I’ve seen this from a couple professional PR bloggers who should know better. Unless you’ve been in a coma for three years, you know who you are.

2. The Recipe Opener.

Take one cup of overused cliche, two tablespoons of tired old trope, and two equal parts of “GAAAH!” and “please kill me now!” Mix thoroughly, and you have a recipe for my least favorite opener. This one is just tiresome and plodding. It was cute the first time I ever saw it in high school, but the 5,000 times since then just make me want to bite my own neck.

It can be used for any story, in any industry, and any publication. And often is.

3. Once Upon a time

I fell prey to this again and again when I first started writing. The inclination is to write like we talk, and we often tell stories to make a point. And where does a story start? Right at the beginning. So I would open a column or article by starting at square one and explaining how I got to to the important lesson of the piece. (See, I even did it to start out this particular paragraph.)

Write your blog posts like a journalist writes a story. The most important part of the story should be the very first sentence. The lead should answer who, what, when, where, why, and how in the first sentence or two. It should not start out with “so I was sitting in a coffee shop with my friend Dave. . .”

4. Stalling

I’m sick of seasonal openers that have nothing to do with the blog post.

The TSA had a stunner on a recent post about their Secure Flight program.

November 1st is right around the corner and with that date comes cooler weather, fall foliage and the seemingly never ending battle between rake and leaf. It also marks the end of the year-long grace period for airlines to clear their systems of old reservations made before TSA’s Secure Flight requirements took effect last year.

The post is not about the autumn colors, cool weather, or the blister-raising tedium of leaf raking. So why even mention it? In fact, the TSA post doesn’t even mention it ever again. Your lead needs to be about the topic, not about the time of year that have nothing to do with what you do.

What bad openers have you seen? What are some good ones? Leave some examples in the comments section and let me know.

My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available for pre-order on Amazon.com. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy, who I also helped write Twitter Marketing For Dummies (another affiliate link).

Photo credit: Zakmc (Flickr)