Blogger wants to talk about the long tail of the p-word

Thanks to, oh, I dunno, the death of one of the biggest pop stars of all time … or you know, all that hell breaking out in — well, lots of places … or maybe just the Twitter meltdown of Alice Hoffman … the story of Chris Anderson’s astonishing, many-layered plagiarisms in a book about, er, information and stuff wanting to be free, has disappeared from everyone’s radar without time for much in the way of consideration.

Too bad, says Brian in a post at Survival of the Book. He says some of the limited discussion of Andersen’s heist wasn’t enough — he’s particularly upset by a post at BoingBoing castigating bloggers for getting so upset about “the p-word” and lauding Andersen for apologizing briefly “without backtracking on [his] failure(s) and why they matter.”

Says Brian, “Look, I understand this isn’t George Bush declaring ‘Mission Accomplished’ a month after a war started, a war that has now gone on almost a decade, or some Bush official dismissing the thousands of people stranded and starving in New Orleans after Katrina. Fine. But ‘the p-word’ is kind of a huge deal to p-people — publishing folks like me and readers of this blog who know that the written word is all we got. If you denigrate that with the mentality that it can be fixed later, no big deal, we got some trouble coming down the line. Â And this is a future that might slam BAM! right in our face if we keep moving at the current speed with such little regard for details and the integrity of publishers.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.

http://lisagoldresearch.wordpress.com Lisa Gold

There are some of us in the blogosphere who continue to write about the issues raised by the Chris Anderson Wikipedia plagiarism kerfuffle, but I am puzzled by the general lack of outrage and the large number of apologists for Anderson. In my last blog post I go into detail about the fact that it is simply not acceptable to quote or paraphrase from Wikipedia when writing a book or doing serious research, the importance of tracking down original sources and verifying information, and the absurdity of Anderson’s claim that he removed his footnotes from the book because he was “unable to find a good citation for web sources.” Here’s the link if you are interested in reading more:

http://lisagoldresearch.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/laziness-is-not-an-excuse-for-plagiarism/
http://lisagoldresearch.wordpress.com Lisa Gold

There are some of us in the blogosphere who continue to write about the issues raised by the Chris Anderson Wikipedia plagiarism kerfuffle, but I am puzzled by the general lack of outrage and the large number of apologists for Anderson. In my last blog post I go into detail about the fact that it is simply not acceptable to quote or paraphrase from Wikipedia when writing a book or doing serious research, the importance of tracking down original sources and verifying information, and the absurdity of Anderson’s claim that he removed his footnotes from the book because he was “unable to find a good citation for web sources.” Here’s the link if you are interested in reading more:

http://lisagoldresearch.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/laziness-is-not-an-excuse-for-plagiarism/
http://SurvivaloftheBook Christopher

I agree with my co-editor Brian that the outrage was far too muted for the transgression here. I also agree with Ms. Gold (though I haven’t gone to read her entire post just yet). Sloppy research work-indeed outright intellectual theft-is the bete noire for any author writing a book or article.

However, it seems to me that this mistake is much more egregious for our reputations as bloggers than it is for Mr. Anderson who clearly doesn’t care anymore and will continue on the same way James Frey did. Unfortunately, it allows the traditional media structure to say “see, they don’t do any of the journalistic work that we reporters have to do and, as a consequence, are accountable to no one.” When one of our own, like Chris Anderson, who should know better cuts corners it reinforces the argument that we aren’t journalists and, as such, have no standards.

For me, that turns my stomach…and denigrates what all of us do here.
http://SurvivaloftheBook Christopher

I agree with my co-editor Brian that the outrage was far too muted for the transgression here. I also agree with Ms. Gold (though I haven’t gone to read her entire post just yet). Sloppy research work-indeed outright intellectual theft-is the bete noire for any author writing a book or article.

However, it seems to me that this mistake is much more egregious for our reputations as bloggers than it is for Mr. Anderson who clearly doesn’t care anymore and will continue on the same way James Frey did. Unfortunately, it allows the traditional media structure to say “see, they don’t do any of the journalistic work that we reporters have to do and, as a consequence, are accountable to no one.” When one of our own, like Chris Anderson, who should know better cuts corners it reinforces the argument that we aren’t journalists and, as such, have no standards.

For me, that turns my stomach…and denigrates what all of us do here.

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June 30, 2009