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.