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To: Madstrider
B. The practices he describes are, indeed, more common than people know. Somebody has to "get the dateline," and EVERYBODY relies on Nexis research for background. That is not plagiarism, so long as credits are properly given.

That's the problem: The Times, and most newspapers, don't give the credits to the freelancers and the staffers that do most of the footwork. (For those of you lucky enough to not be in the journalism industry, what we're talking about is the way that, say, a magazine like Newsweek will publish a story "by" a specific person or persons - for example, this article on Al Qaeda "by" Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman and Evan Thomas, but will also note at the end of the article (scroll down to the bottom) that several other people were involved in gathering the information needed for the main authors to write the story (in this case: "With Mark Hosenball and Tamara Lipper in Washington, Christopher Dickey in Paris, Tom Masland in Lebanon and Emily Flynn in London." Newspapers like The New York Times don't generally give a damn about the Hosenballs, Lippers, Dickeys, Maslands and Flynns, and never credit them.)

The question, of course, is why this is somehow Bragg's fault this time when The Times never gives the foot soldiers bylines. He probably is being scapegoated.

15 posted on 05/27/2003 2:09:36 AM PDT by Timesink
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To: Timesink
You know, I absolutely didn't know this. I had no idea that reporters for newspapers had "staff." I actually assumed that they gathered the information themselves.

I have noticed those names in articles in Time and Newsweek, but I assumed that this was because the story was so big it required people in several different cities.

If this is the practice at major newspapers, no wonder they make so many factual errors.

By the way, it looks to me like infighting and talking to other papers is accelerating. Excellent.

And he is too whining!!

16 posted on 05/27/2003 2:53:56 AM PDT by Miss Marple
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