A Macworld article: Final Cut Pro X 10.1: the features video pros want

[Bret Williams]

Why do I feel I’ve read this before? Was most of it lifted from the article linked to on the post immediately previous?

[Bill Davis]

[Bret Williams] “Why do I feel I’ve read this before? Was most of it lifted from the article linked to on the post immediately previous?”

Yeah, I feel the same. This kinda feels like its veering away from “quoting” sources and skating pretty darn close to plagiarism.

But I don’t know in what direction. During my years as a contributing editor in the print magazine era, I worked on about a 4 month lead time to accommodate production deadlines. I don’t have a clue what kind of lead time writers have today for submissions to a site like MacWorld. It might be hours for all I know. So who knows who was the original author and who did the copy and paste job?

But there are definitely two “original” articles out there that share a whole lot more than I would ever have been comfortable with if either had appeared under my name as author.

Brave new era indeed.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Michael Sanders]

As one of the people quoted I feel I can comment safely about this.

The author posted a message on the Facebook FCP page asking for comments, stating quite clearly that they were researching for an article to be published in Macworld.

To be fair I’m slightly miffed they didn’t seek to contact me to ask if it was OK to publish my name but in her defence Facebook is an open forum so there’ no real damage.

Michael Sanders
London Based DP/Editor

[Bill Davis]

[Michael Sanders] “The author posted a message on the Facebook FCP page asking for comments, stating quite clearly that they were researching for an article to be published in Macworld.

To be fair I’m slightly miffed they didn’t seek to contact me to ask if it was OK to publish my name but in her defence Facebook is an open forum so there’ no real damage.
“

Maybe it’s just my “old fashioned” journalism values talking, but I kinda disagree. “Researching” is not the same as obtaining “on the record” quotes – and to use the former as the latter is something that used to get writers in a lot of trouble.

The internet is already a snake pit of unsupported opinion and IP theft. So for “named” magazines websites to allow this kind of “cut and paste journalism” without clear attribution and even a half-hearted effort at re-writing is, IMO, unprofessional.

The really sad thing is that because the internet is largely searchable, it’s more and more likely that a topic search will pull up BOTH articles – the one purported to be original from MacWorld – AND the one where those blocks of text were lifted.

So the hapless writer is much more likely in the modern era to be “found out”, for better or worse, as someone who is OK with using large blocks of writing without attribution – and that might damage her ability to be taken seriously in any organization that values original work.

That used to be a career ender in the shops I worked for. So much so, that every contract for publication I ever signed made it ABSOLUTELY clear in their terms and conditions that they expected ORIGINAL work. Period. Full Stop.

I just know I would have been mortified if anyone could ever have found a copy of anything I wrote that had big blocks of text that someone else had written and that I’d re-used without expressed attribution.

And so it goes.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.