New Yorker magazine alert thread

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

I think it's telling that a lot of these plagiarists are extremely prolific practically public figures with their fingers in many pies. Between the books, columns, TV appearances and speaking engagements, at some point they either simply must struggled to churn out copy or grow so complacent they think no one will notice. Don't believe for a second that word for word phrases, sentences and paragraphs make it in accidentally, unless by "accident" they mean they were sloppy covering up their plagiarism.

i have a feeling these guys have interns and grad students writing most of their stuff

"You there, kid ... go find me a New Yorker piece to rip off. Only the good bit, please, I'm in a hurry. Now off with you!"

things i never read in the nyer:

- fiction (can't stand it in columns)
- shouts & murmurs
- that fucking horrible shopping column.

I read the Shouts & Murmurs, which are short and occasionally good. Hate the shopping column. Totally forget the fiction is there except as a thank god reaction that there are 10 pages or whatever that I don't have to bother with. Sometimes I end up reading a book or collection by an author of one of those short pieces, and it's noted that it was excerpted in the New Yorker, and I think, huh, didn't read it.

Hate the shopping column, too.

actually everyone in boston is a racist n/m

― Lamp, Saturday, August 11, 2012 1:31 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is not technically true, they are just horrible people

is there really a shopping column btw

Out and About with Miss Spending Account, or something like that. It's this arch local shop-a-log that's rife with prices.

Like, the shopping column could be good if it were fictional parody, like The Cursing Mommy (which is getting its own book!). But alas.

haha how many times has this thread had the shouts and murmurs/Patricia Marx/denby conversation

6?

Also, we seem to be in an ebb period, without many pieces to talk about. Once the New Yorker hits a flow period, there'll be less talk of what's wrong.

ive srsly never noticed the shopping column

patricia marx

it's mystifying

'on and off the avenue'

i complain about it every 6 mos or so

That's about how often it gets published anyway

i also have never noticed the shopping column (is it in the happenings section?) either, for a second i thought you weirdos were referring to surowiecki.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/08/081208fa_fact_marx

btw whats up w their urls too

hey joe theres a fn basketball game on

ya im sort of watching