Bloggers plagiarizing journalists

I recently found a blog on treehugger.com that lifted a story by National Geographic writer Steven Stanek. I contacted the site and the writer, and eventually they took down the story. I posted the story on my website before it was removed. The email exchange is as follows:

Hello,
The author of this article at treehugger.com is plagiarizing an article from National Geographic's website. The byline is of a PhD student's name instead of the real author. Even the photo fails to give credit. It is misleading to say that Jeremy Elton Jacquot wrote this story from Los Angeles, when in fact a journalist traveled to the Western Desert in Egypt to do research and interview people. Jacquot is basically taking credit for something he didn't do. It is possible that treehugger.com subscribes to a service that gave them the story, but if not, it's unethical and also against the law to post copyrighted material and changing the name.

After posting a comment and then emailing the editor of the website, my comment was removed for no apparent reason. After looking through your website, I have found your writers to be responsible when it comes to properly citing sources. This author, Jacquot, however, appears to repeatedly plagiarize others' work. I request that you appropriately address this situation. As a PhD student, Jacquot should know better than to plagiarize, which should lead to repercussions at his academic institution.

Kind Regards,
Andrew Bossone


Dear Andrew,

I'm sorry to have deleted your comments, but it seems as though you misunderstand the premise of TreeHugger; as writers, we don't actually go out to various locations - except locally (in my case, for example, in Los Angeles) - and write original stories. We sift through stories we find online and report on them for TreeHugger.

Hence, in this case, I covered a story written by a writer who traveled to Egypt for National Geographic News. By no means am I suggesting I did all the research and work; I'm simply reporting on a story already written and including an image from said story. I have always done this (see my other work) so it seems strange to isolate this one story for my supposed "plagiarizing".

Best regards,

Jeremy

Jeremy,
Maybe you don't understand the premise of journalism, which is that reporters get paid for their work and it is the property of them and the publication they work for. Your story is neither original nor reported. You lifted Stanek's quotes verbatim and followed the same exact story structure. This is called plagiarism, and you do it in all of your stories. Just pick one. This is not the case for the rest of the bloggers on treehugger, who give credit for other people's stories, although even that is questionable. As a journalist, I depend on other people not to misuse or steal my work. Other websites attributed this article to you, therefore the real author was not properly given credit for his work.
The fact that you removed the comment yourself rather than answering it directly suggests that you have dubious intentions. Clearly, treehugger.com is not against free speech, and my comments were not inappropriate, so I wonder why you removed it other than to protect yourself.
If you were to write other people's ideas in a research paper without proper citation, you could be kicked out of school. Doing this in real life can result in a lawsuit. Please consider removing the story and begin citing authors appropriately as I do not want to take this situation further.

Sincerely,
Andrew

Dear Andrew,

I understand your concerns and, as per your suggestions, will take down the story (I will do so immediately though it may take a few minutes for the website to register the change). I will also do a better job of citing other authors' work as I do not wish to take away from their efforts; with regards to this, how would you suggest I best cite their work? I mean no ill intention in this question; you say that you consider even the citation work of my fellow bloggers "questionable" so I would like to best reflect in my work what you consider appropriate.

I also apologize for removing your comment; you are certainly right to note that it was by no means inappropriate and it would've behooved me to leave it standing.

I thank you for your input and am sorry for having behaved unprofessionally.

Best regards,

Jeremy

Dear Jeremy,
You certainly made the right choice and I appreciate your maturity on the issue. I will think about your question and answer more thoroughly, but the short answer is that every quote, idea and photograph should be properly attributed. If you want to represent yourself as a journalist/reporter/writer, then you should take it seriously and actually do reporting yourself. There is a space for blogging, but it should be done responsibly and original authors should have credit for their work.

Sincerely,
Andrew

Dear Andrew,

Thank you again for your feedback; I will certainly try do more reporting where possible and, since it will continue to account for a great majority of my writing, do a more thorough job of properly attributing quotes, pictures, etc to their proper sources. I will start by directly giving credit to the author at the beginning of my post so as to direct interested readers to the original story.

As someone who one day hopes to do more original reporting, I do appreciate your advice and look forward to hearing your further input.

Best regards,

Jeremy

Hi Jeremy,
I didn't take offense to your question, but I have one for you and I hope you don't take offense, even though it is a bit caustic: How is that you are a PhD student, yet you don't have a clear understanding of plagiarism?

I would suggest a few things for proper attribution. First, as you said, lead off the story with the name of the real author and where s/he was reporting from. You should also link the story up top, rather than at the bottom, as you have it.
You should put the author's name on the quote, although quotes aren't a good idea in my opinion(I'll explain that later). So instead of writing "I used to live on a farm," John said, you should write, "I used to live on a farm," John told reporter Brian Doe of the New York Times.
I would also be careful about using photos at all. These are subject to strict copyright laws. They are possession of the photographer and the news agency. Are you familiar with the concept of fair use? Basically it means that if someone posts a picture on a personal website and you find it on google images, for example, or if a website offers photos for free, then they are "fair use" and you can use them freely. Other pictures require express written permission from the owners of the photos.
This is why I said the citation work of bloggers is questionable. Rarely, if ever, do you see bloggers requesting permission before taking the ideas, quotes, or photos from the original author. It's one thing to cite a story and critique, its another to rewrite and use it on your own. This is why using quotes is questionable. A journalist goes to a specific location, with a specific person and uses it for a specific purpose. In the case of your story, you wrote it from LA, but the journalist had to do all the leg work in Egypt. At the end of the day, you get credit because other bloggers cite you, and your website generates a profit, yet someone else did all of the work.

I hope you found this informative and not bombastic. I am not a journalist that believes there is anything wrong with blogging, but I do believe that just as there are rules for journalists, there should be rules for bloggers. This way there is an even playing field. Bloggers are taking jobs from journalists, so let's make the game fair.
My last piece of advice since you are considering being a professional writer: You will have gained expertise in a field after your studies. That's great. There needs to be more expert writers to ensure the truth is out there. Just be careful about citing sources and opinions. There will be many people who disagree with you and will try to denounce what you write or you personally. Make sure your facts are straight, and you'll always be able to defend yourself.

Sincerely,
Andrew Bossone

Hi Andrew,

No offense taken; to answer your first question - a very fair one - I guess the same type of citing issues never arose in my work previously. You may consider this a poor excuse, but most of my citation work - being in the sciences - uses a specific format and typically leads me to catalog all my sources at the end of my reports, using one of several common formats (usually APA). Again, I know this isn't the most convincing excuse, but I've yet to write many papers employing sources other than primary literature; the image issue never really came up before.

I appreciate your advice and completely understand your point vis-a-vis the fairness issue. As I've stated before, I have no intention of misrepresenting or stealing other reporters' work and will do my best from now on to properly attribute where is necessary.

Best regards,

Jeremy