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June 17, 2006
WSJ watch
A couple of days ago I was interviewed by a Wall Street Journal writer who said that when the story (on plagiarism amongst international grad students) ran, he'd drop me an email and let me know. Which is nice of him, because I'm not a WSJ subscriber and don't plan to become one.
Of course, the story may never run: I've been interviewed by the NY Times and Rolling Stone, and neither story ever happened. I do hope it will run, though, because so far the major MSM treatment of my arguments about plagiarism have been interview-free hatchet jobs by the likes of Reader's Digest and U.S. News & World Report. (Some regional papers, in contrast, have interviewed me and subsequently run ~fair~and~balanced~ stories on plagiarism.) So as somebody who suffers through shovelsful of aggregated daily stories about the perfidy of students and the joys of Turnitin (today's entry was from the LAT), I am indeed eager to see MSM coverage of alternative approaches. Namely mine.
All of this is to say, if you're a WSJ subscriber or if you happen across their plagiarism story (the interviewer was Rob Tomsho, and the byline will presumably be his), would you please let me know?
Posted by senioritis at June 17, 2006 10:01 PM
Comments
I do not subscribe to the WSJ, but for you, I will add certain tags to my MSM news aggregators. If a story runs on plagiarism, I will certainly be alerted and forward it to you.
Posted by: Marie at June 20, 2006 09:34 PM
I was interviewed several months ago for a story about plagiarism in the Chronicle. Did they interview you as well? I never saw that story appear either.
Posted by: Kelly Ritter at June 22, 2006 08:48 PM
Get used to it. If you were to say that students who plagiarize are a bunch of unethical criminals who need to be disciplined and remediated, you'd be in every MSM publication on the topic. (And yes, I count CHE as MSM.) But a developmental, pedagogical response to plagiarism is, in MSM terms, B-O-R-I-N-G. So you get lots of interviews and not so many actual appearances.
There was a moment in the WSJ interview where I realized, uh, this is going into print. The journalist asked me what I thought about the fact that lots o' profs, when they encounter plagiarism, look the other way. I said I was horrified by that. He waited a tic and then prompted, "Horrified." I said not dealing with plagiarism was a form of not teaching. I said, "It's like waking up that morning and saying to yourself, 'I don't feel like teaching today.'" There was a gasp, and then he cracked up. We went on to talk about the complications of dealing with plagiarism (e.g., institutions that don't support professors' complaints about plagiarism), and I hope some of that gets into the article (if it's published). Cuz that (rather brash) quotation most certainly will.
Posted by: senioritis at June 22, 2006 09:50 PM
Ah—and the answer to your question is "Nope. Wasn't interviewed for that CHE piece."
Posted by: senioritis at June 22, 2006 09:51 PM