New Yorker magazine alert thread

Looks like Claressa shields, the boxer profiled a couple months ago, will be trying to win gold tmrw.

hey, this is the fucking worst
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTiCulvL-lA

Fareed Zakaria: "Media reporters have pointed out that paragraphs in my Time column this week bear close similarities to paragraphs in Jill Lepore's essay in the April 23rd issue of The New Yorker. They are right. I made a terrible mistake. It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault. I apologize unreservedly to her, to my editors at Time, and to my readers."

"Time has suspended Zakaria for his offense"

i always kinda wonder if anyone ever genuinely does that by mistake -- like, reads something, silently absorbs its exact phrasing, and unknowingly regurgitates it -- or if the journalism industry is just filled with lazy ppl who believe they'll be the one who gets away with it, or 'everybody does it' or something. i assume zakaria's in the latter group, since his paragraph is virtually word-for-word plagiarism.

I was kind of idly wondering in the Zakaria thread about the chance it was unintentional. Part of my job involves writing, and sometimes a word will strike me as particularly apt or evocative, and then I'll realize/discover that it was in a source I just consulted. But usually it's just a single word or maybe a short phrase. I think you're right, though, about Zakaria -- it's hard for me to imagine someone unwittingly copying the shape and structure of a whole paragraph.

not every publication can have the same level of fact checking as the new yorker

i cant say i really care that zakaria barely reworded another writers paraphrasing of a book

otm

I think our obsession with punishing plagiarism is becoming hysterical.

I can't believe people do this? Like I don't even understand the impulse to steal words like that.

I think our obsession with punishing plagiarism is becoming hysterical.

Would you say the same thing about shoplifting? Probably not, right?

no because they're not the same thing

so plagiarism isn't stealing? what is it then?

Like jaymc said, anyone who writes a lot will unconsciously borrow words or even consciously emulate the way in which someone else's graceful or zingy sentence works. The trick is to catch it and rearrange it just so. It's Zakaria's misfortune to be caught stealing boilerplate.

Like jaymc said, anyone who writes a lot will unconsciously borrow words or even consciously emulate the way in which someone else's graceful or zingy sentence works.

This isn't just stealing, its lazy writing. It's too hard to take fifteen minutes and rework someone's words? Lazy.

it's kind of hysterical to imagine zakaria reading the original and, presumably, trying to think of a way to put his own spin on it, and then coming up with this:

lepore:

As the governor of Texas explained in 1893, the “mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man.

zakaria:

As the governor of Texas (Texas!) explained in 1893, the "mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man."

as least as lazy as your not reading my second sentence, def.

xpost

Fareed Zakaria, Author of the Texas.

this type of out-and-out plagiarism is some real bullshit but i'm kinda wary of the whole recent trend of charging writers with 'self-plagiarism' for stuff they've written for different publications -- if only because i, like i assume most writers, have a bunch of pet phrases that i use over and over again.

no i read your sentence. you seem to be suggesting that this in unconscious for anyone who writes a lot. i disagree.

Have recent self-plagiarism charges been about "pet phrases", though?

Like jaymc said, anyone who writes a lot will unconsciously borrow words or even consciously emulate the way in which someone else's graceful or zingy sentence works. The trick is to catch it and rearrange it just so. It's Zakaria's misfortune to be caught stealing boilerplate.

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, August 10, 2012 8:53 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He's not "consciously emulating." He's stealing whole paragraphs and coming up with lazy little changes.

it's of course possible that Zakaria thinks the original sentence is worth steadling.

he didn't steal a "sentence." Did you even read what he wrote?

Yeah there isn't much graceful or zingy (zingy!) about the sentences he copied.

I'm referring to the sentences J.D. put side by side.

Have recent self-plagiarism charges been about "pet phrases", though?

― boxall, Friday, August 10, 2012 8:59 PM (5 minutes ago)

more on the order of reusing entire paragraphs (obv a very bad idea), but i worry that it's a slipper slope.

slippery, even.

has fareed zakaria ever had an original thought? every time i've read him he's sounded like the 'international studies' majors i knew in college who read the economist and would say things like 'well, you know, globalization has really changed the whole game.'

On "This Week" for a while in the mid 2000s he was like their pet Middle Easterner.

i cant say i really care that zakaria barely reworded another writers paraphrasing of a book
― max, Friday, August 10, 2012 8:43 PM

I don't "care," but I also think TIME should fire him.

with the whole shortage of paying jobs for ppl who write professionally thing i don't have any problems w/ one-strike plagiarism dismissals. plenty of talented writers out there who will always make up their own sentences.

i think it says something that it's the mediocre writers who always get caught doing this -- like, you can't imagine jill lepore ripping off a fareed zakaria piece.

uh-oh!

CNN also said it was suspending Zakaria because he plagiarized the same material for a CNN.com blog post:

“We have reviewed Fareed Zakaria’s TIME column, for which he has apologized. He wrote a shorter blog post on CNN.com on the same issue which included similar unattributed excerpts. That blog post has been removed and CNN has suspended Fareed Zakaria while this matter is under review.”

who are some writers that haven't been caught plagiarizing yet but you wouldn't be surprised if they were? tom friedman? david brooks? really most of the NYT op-ed ppl. my only consideration is that w/out googling i'm not sure friedman + brooks haven't already been busted.

poor Bob Dylan!

not technically the same thing, but according to alex cockburn, friedman basically ripped off one of his famous anecdotes from someone else -- as in, ripped off something that happened to cockburn's brother, and claimed that it happened to him:

http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2000/2000-September/016822.html

idk Tom Friedman has always seemed uniquely and creatively corrupt in his use of language to me

like who the hell would he rip his signature mixed metaphors from?

even his book titles are inapt in their own special way

so plagiarism isn't stealing? what is it then?

keeping an eye on the competition

I can't believe people do this? Like I don't even understand the impulse to steal words like that.

― Mr. Que, Friday, August 10, 2012 4:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

people who do this shit are just busy and ambitious and im happy to see them fail not because its some huge crime against humanity but because theyre in it for themselves and not really offering anything, move over lames

Lena Dunham's piece is both really good sentence by sentence and also fits the stereotype of New Yorker lifestyle sentence by sentence.

the short story in the most recent issue was so empty and terrible it made me ashamed for having even read it i hope it was joke but i think it maybe wasnt

i think i got lulled into a false sense of optimism re: short fiction in the nyer cuz i liked the f scott thing and the one about the dude that cheated on his gf was enraging but also at least readable and the mavis gallant stuff was so good that i thought maybe this one might be terrible i mean i liked the maille meloy one about wedding proxies and i thought this one might be similarly likable if slight but instead it was just a collection of the actual worst things including a list of bands a fake person would like on facebook that made me sadder than anything

did you like the junot diaz one?

it made me angry but i liked the cadence of it and it was really engrossing although i wonder if everyone in boston isnt a racist they just realized that the narrator was a total piece of shit

actually everyone in boston is a racist n/m

haha yeah really