Sunday’s headlines

6 comments

1. The Sun article plagiarized a large passage from a Torontoist post on the same subject, lifting 33 consecutive words with no modification and no credit. More info here:

   http://torontoist.com/2008/01/the_sun.php

2. Interesting. The passage that is the same looks like information though, not opinion/original writing. If it’s a list of “the facts” then I’m not sure if it is plagiarized.

   At any rate, the Sun has already joined the ranks of blog dipping. Have torontoist people seen this:

   http://canadianmags.blogspot.com/2007/12/pay-up-said-spacing-blogger-and-toronto.html

   I’d post it there, but they seem to require registration to just leave a comment.

3. Here’s the passage:

   Monday was a subway and streetcar colouring book; Tuesday was tips on how to flirt on the subway (pictured above); Wednesday was a guided graffiti tour along the 510 Spadina streetcar route; Thursday was a cryptogram, maze, connect-the-dots game, and riddles; and today’s, Friday, was a claim that the whole system is now free.

   In the original article, some of those are links to various pages on Posterchild’s blog. They are David Topping’s original descriptions of the various pamphlets, not information provided by Posterchild himself.

   It was a pretty clear copy-paste job, and I hope the Sun at least prints an apology. I think David remembers what happened to Spacing and hopefully there will be some kind of similar response. At least Spacing has actually been ripped off by reputable newspapers in the past as well as the Sun, haha.

4. The comments and the post itself are disturbingly personal though — should have been directed at Sun editorial.

5. Isn’t one trick teachers use to spot plagiarism looking at whether two students make the same mistake? In that case, the bit about Friday’s being “a claim that the whole system is now free” is telling: Friday’s actually said the system would be free starting next year. If the 33 words came from Posterchild, surely they would have gotten that bit right.

6. Torontoist is to blogs what the Sun is to newspapers — both slide along the low end of each genre, so this all seems appropriate.