Breaking News

Okay, things are looking up for my story.

I got in touch with a student that goes to Clark. He seemed upbeat about being interviewed about plagiarism because apparently just a few days ago in one of his English classes, a girl got caught plagiarizing.

I'm going there tomorrow morning to interview him. Hopefully I can get in touch with the girl, but he said she was really upset about the situation. If she did talk to me, I doubt she'll go on the record.

But my question is--why did she do it? Did she know she was plagiarizing? Was it unintentional?

We shall see...

Super Stressed

If there's a word that exists for "beyond stressed out", I would like to insert it here.

I know that I'm focusing on Journalism in school. I know that I'm interning at a TV station. I know that I ultimately want to work somewhere in the news force. But currently, 2 classes and my internship are bogging me down with having to go out and get interviews--for different things--all under deadline.

For Magazine Writing, we're conducting an investigation on plagiarism. Right, you already know that. I interviewed an English professor here. That went well. I contacted the chair of the English department at Clark and she said she was really busy, so she agreed to a phone interview yesterday. It was okay, but I didn't get everything I was looking for once I listened to the recording again, but now she says she's too busy to do a follow-up interview. I contacted another professor from Clark last week, and she only got back to me yesterday that she's very crunched for time and can't do an interview this week.
COME ON PEOPLE. I intern at Channel 3, and I see them get interviews like it's a piece of cake. In fact. I interviewed the Mayor the other week. Me. Yeah. I interviewed the MAYOR, and a few professors can't even put down their pencil to talk to me. People will drop what they're doing for 2 seconds and talk to a "real" reporter, but they can't even sit down for a phone interview, which, mind you, is not even what we're supposed to be doing--I'll get points off for that... It's pissing me off.

Besides all that drama, and stress, and nonsense, I have to start doing interviews for another radio show.

Besides that, I'm interning at Channel 3--3 nights a week now, just so I can build up more clips to send out to stations in hopes of someone trying to set up a job interview with me. And if I were even lucky enough to get a job interview, I'd have trouble putting it into my schedule because of everyone else's schedules that I need to work around.

Besides that, I'm trying to write an article for the Provoc.

Besides that, I'm still trying to edit things for Thoreau's Rooster.

A number of people I vented to suggested that I make up interviews to get these assignments done. I wanted to slap them in the face.

Does anyone understand how unprofessional, and downright stupid it is to make up interviews? Agh.

I know I should get used to the stress. Reporters have to go out and get loads of interviews in one day. But they're focused on one subject. They don't have 6 classes under their belts. They're already secure in a job. They can go home at night and turn on the TV instead of freak out at their computer, thinking that they still need to read for advertising after they post this blog entry, and pray that the student from Clark they just emailed will get back to them for a face to face interview Thursday morning.

Are you stressed out reading this?

Even the big guys plagiarize

I was surprised to find that even the big-shot journalists plagiarize when they're in a time crunch. In 2005, Ken Powers of the Worcester Telegram and Gazette got fired for plagiarizing big chunks of a column that Peter King wrote for Sports Illustrated on the Patriots and the Superbowl.

Link to Peter King's Article in Sport's Illustrated

Link to article in USA TODAY about Powers plagiarizing the article

It's one thing if you're looking to someone else's article or column for information and leads so you can get a start on your story. I see reporters do that every day. But to copy whole paragraphs almost word for word? That's stupid.

I don't have any sympathy for Powers. He got what he deserved--losing his job and lots of public outrage at his crime. I can see how someone might plagiarize in the newsroom accidentally though. Last night at my internship I was handed two T & G articles and was asked to write VOs (voice-overs) for them so that the anchor could read them during the 10 p.m. newscast. The reporter said to me, "Here, summarize these into VOs as best you can, short of plagiarizing the articles."
But the articles were short little blurbs that were hard to put into my own words. So I did my best to change things around, put names and titles in a different order than they appeared on the page, but the reporter ended up correcting me on them anyway. In the news, you can't put the name before the title or the town the person is from (if they don't have a title). So she ended up wording it almost word for word in the article--without even knowing it.

If reporters are supposed to live and write by the book, and they all follow the same book--then many reporters are bound to start out with the same exact lead. The first few sentences are hard to make different from everyone else's.

There are so many loopholes in this investigation. Sometimes I feel like I'm going around in circles.

The Apple

Half an hour ago in the living room...

First Roommate: I'm so nervous about this test that I have tomorrow. So much material to cover...
Second Roommate: Is that for the class I was in last semester? Oh! I remember that chapter! That test wasn't that bad. I could probably take it again. In fact, I could even show you the test if I still have it.
*First Roommate looks bewildered. Sits in silence biting pencil*
Second Roommate: Do you want me to see if I can find the test?
First Roommate: No thanks. I think I'll do this on my own.

APPLAUSE! ROUND OF APPLAUSE TO FIRST ROOMMATE FOR RESISTING THE TEMPTATION TO CHEAT! Bravo, my dear friend. You are one of the few who would resist that test. It's like God during Lent, dripping melted chocolate into your face every chance he gets when he knows you gave it up for the season. And to see that test, slipping out of your roommate's fingertips, into your lap...with all of the perfect answers.... Ah, kudos to you my friend. Nothing but cheers.



As for me, I just finished typing up my Works Cited page for the re-done research I did from last week. I guess even as a senior in college I still have issues with citing sources correctly. I thought for this past assignment we just had to put a little blurb as to where we got our info, but my professor noted none of my sources were cited correctly. I also made a big generalization at the top of my paper with no source to back it up. So did I plagiarize? Perhaps unintentionally. Wow--isn't that scary? Here I am ranting about how easy it is to just cite your sources, and here I am doing it incorrectly.

I must confess. I was busy the night of that assignment. I had 3 other 1-page papers to write for courses after I finished editing in the newsroom for the Provoc. By the time I got back to my room, I decided the easiest thing to do would be to slap down the author and journal title and I'd be all set--or just list out the website where I looked at info about plagiarism.

Lazy. I just should've stayed up the extra half hour to do things the right way.

But once again, I'm backing up my theory. People, myself included, are just so goddamn lazy.

Interns

I'm interning this semester at a local TV station. I love it. The people there are awesome. They're down to Earth. They understand my witty humor. They let me do things and take on responsibilities like interview the mayor of Worcester, videotape Kenny Rogers, help them edit and put pieces together in the editing suites, tape stand-ups, and hopefully a lot more as the semester progresses.

But interns get the shaft.

No where does my name show up that I did any of the work. I'm not getting paid. I carry around tripods that are almost as big as I am. I'm there 16 hours a week, neglect my other work for school, and am really exhausted by the end of the day. And for what? To be thrown out into this shitty economy hoping that experience will lead me to a bigger and better station?

I don't get credit. And I know I'm an intern. I know I'm the little bitch that's supposed to go get someone's coffee. But if I'm right there next to the reporter, researching their story, helping them write some of their script, and doing a lot of the grunt work, shouldn't my name be somewhere in the credits...?

I guess you could consider this a stretch on the whole plagiarism concept. Someone could easily argue against me, and certainly win the argument.

But I could win it too.

Baffled

I guess I'm just baffled.

It's so easy to not plagiarize. My research involves education and perhaps people accidentally plagiarize because they weren't educated well enough on the subject. But after interviewing one of the English professor's at Assumption, I don't think that's really the case. Professors usually address the severity of plagiarism in each one of their classes. Furthermore, if they catch a kid plagiarizing by accident, they re-teach their students how to properly cite and give credit to sources.

Even in class last week when we went to the library to do some research, I found out that EBSCO has an option to put the article you found in proper bibliographic format. How much easier could it get?

In general, I'm kind of aggravated that students still cheat. Plagiarism is a moral issue. Just do the work! People would feel better about themselves if they knew that they were capable of getting an "A" on a paper.

Supporting my Theory

I think my theory has at least proved true in the media. Here is a scene from the popular sitcom Grounded for Life where Lily plagiarizes a paper simply because she wasn't interested in the topic she was assigned. The same happens to her mother, Claudia.

Click here to view Grounded for Life

I also interviewed a student who knows at least 3 people who have plagiarized in her 4 years at Assumption. Here's that section of my transcribed interview:

Megan: Do you think it would help if there was one class devoted per course about plagiarism and about citing sources correctly? Do you think that would help? Or do you really think it’s just like laziness and people just don’t want to do their work?

Holly: I think it’s really just laziness. I don’t think it would take that long to lay down the basics. I mean, maybe part of a class, but I think most professors do that anyway. They have it in the syllabus and they usually go over the syllabus the first day of class, so as long as they do that then that pretty much clears it up, and the rest of the plagiarism is just people being lazy and just as long as their punished for that I think that will help


I don't know how much more blunt I could get...

Research

We discussed some aspects of our research yesterday in class. Quite frankly, a lot of the answers people came up with were complicated. PBS called our generation an overachieving culture, so we are quick to find answers to get to the top of the ladder. Apparently, some students feel that there's too much pressure on the grading system, and that grades diminish from actual learning. And of course, we can blame it on education and the school systems--they aren't integrating enough class time to teaching about plagiarism. If we just had full classes about it, people won't do it anymore.

I'm going to have to disagree, not to be annoying, but quite honestly, I had a bit of a revelation. I personally believe a lot of students plagiarize simply because they aren't interested in the subject or topic assigned to them.

Think about it. If your professor assigns you a 12 page research paper on the history of Germany, and you have no interest in that subject, aren't you more tempted to find an easy way out of the assignment? Or for an English paper, you're assigned to annotate and discuss the writings of Samuel Beckett, but you despise his work and don't give a care in the world about him or his thoughts, wouldn't it be easier to snag someone else's? Because, I personally know that if I'm in love with the subject, I'm going to want to impress the professor. If I love the writing of Virginia Woolf, I'm going to spend wanted hours writing and musing over my work. I want to be proud of the things I love. And the things I'm annoyed with, or that are a simple hurdle in the path of my dreams--I'm just going to try and bypass them as quickly as humanly possible. To some, that pass is by cheating.

I came by that revelation thinking about my own life for this semester. I'm taking an Advertising class that I have no desire to be in. I don't want to go into advertising. I hate advertisements. I want nothing to do with that field. But I was nudged by "the wiser" that it would look great on my resume in a pinch if I needed to find a job. And since I'm taking six classes this semester, and am completely bogged down in work, I'm constantly thinking of an easier way to get that work done... Will that lead me to plagiarism? I sincerely doubt it, but I'm sure if others were placed in my situation, they'd be looking for quick ways to get six classes under their belt in a timely fashion.

So going back to the research aspect of this assignment---what are the solutions to this problem? Everyone faces hurdles in their life that they don't like.

Because I think that even without grades or forcing professors to teach classes about plagiarism won't stop the whole problem.

How can we convince students to do the mature thing and "grow up"?

Assignments

Research assignments were given out in class last week. Our professor split us up into three groups, each of us researching a different part of plagiarism:

1. Why is it happening?
2. Repercussions
3. Solutions

With these three researched topics, each group will compose a long article going into detail about what they found in journals and government resources, as well as what they find in interviews.

My group is researching solutions to the problem. What can be done to prevent plagiarism from even happening in the first place? What can professors and students do?

But this is very complicated. What I really want to find out--and hope I can get the assistance from other students in the class is: can plagiarism ever really be stopped? There are professors and universities out there that stress plagiarism as a bigger deal than other schools. I discovered that from my research some universities and schools require professors to address plagiarism several times throughout their course, not just offhandedly on the syllabus like most professors do here at Assumption. Is that why this is a growing problem on this campus--because professors don't address the issue well enough? So then, is it the professor's fault when a student plagiarizes in his/her class?

The questions are endless. I also found articles devoted to just the definition of plagiarism and how fuzzy that term is. Each university has their own way of dealing with the issue. Could we even go so far as to instigate a national punishment for plagiarism? Now that's certainly a big thought...

I hope that I find that some of these solutions are working through my research, and perhaps pass the word on to the administration here.

Maybe plagiarism is preventable.

But then again, maybe the human race is just getting lazier and lazier every day...