It least she wasn’t in black face…
Critiquing the news business by plaguerizing…certainly drives home the point.
I recall when Stephen Ambrose was in trouble for plagiarism and it was quite clear that it wasn’t worth it or possible in a google world. Professors have been running plagiarism checking software since the early 2000s. On the other hand, sloppy referencing is a daily occurrence. For the academic, it gives you the reputation of slob. It gets down to theft or negligence. Both are serious: nobody likes thieves and carelessness is especially undesirable in a chief editor.
The book was ghost written – as the article makes clear. Her response reminds of when Charles Barkley claimed he was misquoted in his autobiography. What’s tragic is not that her ghost writer plagiarized but that a former editor of the nation’s paper of record is incapable of writing a book by herself.
The second guy who came out yesterday claiming plagiarism (Ian Frisch? can’t remember his name) had more of a case of sloppy referencing. Most of the things he posted were substantially reworded, and unless she totally didn’t cite him then they would pass. The stuff the Vice guy posted was in another league. Cut and pasted with just a couple of words changed, usually to alter the tense or clarify things where context was removed. That’s plagiarism whether you cite the source or not.
I always say, if you are going to deny plagiarism, go on The Network That Lies (Fox) for that exercise.
That will boost your story.
Examples of plagiarism look damning, despite a large list of endnotes.