Reading the Charlotte Sun Newspaper

The byline on today’s story is that of the CEO of a local community Hospital. But if readers expect “Increase your child’s health and safety this summer” to be straight from the top administrator’s pen, they would be wrong.

It appears the administrator is a plagiarist – an unintentional one, most likely – but it’s her name on a Charlotte Sun “Health and Fitness” article that appears nearly word-for-word on a copyrighted Web site called Stretcher Dot Com.

It looks like CEO Wendy Brandon — or more likely the hospital’s paid copywriter – has “borrowed” extensively from a material researched and written by a professional speaker and author named Brenda Nixon. Nixon hales from Ohio and is unlikley to read the local paper. So what’s the harm in stealing three or four paragraphs from her?

For one thing, Nixon earns her living through her pen and offers her articles for reprint. The agreement — if she is typical of most freelancers — is she gets paid and the stories carry her by-line. So, unless the hospital has hired Brenda Nixon herself under a contract that allows the hospital to alter content, then the remarkable similarities between Nixon’s and Brandon’s versions require some explanation. The most probable one is plagiarism.

This particular plagiarism example raises the question, is it plagiarism when the copyist alters some of the wording to “make it her own?” After all, the copyist has made changes.

The answer is, yes. Plagiarism doesn’t have to be an exact, unvaried, word-for-word copy. Plagiarism happens when an idea is co-opted. Plagiarism occurs when the order of ideas (story structure) is copied. Plagiarism happens when the underlying sentence structure is copied. Plagiarism is not avoided by changing a couple of words or flopping the order of one or two sentences. For example, in the case of the Nixon-Brandon pieces below, changing “plea” to “beg” and substituting “help” for “do the trick” is simply synonym swapping. Moving around a couple of phrases about how much kids like dogs not only doesn’t avoid plagiarism, the ruse strongly suggests the hospital’s writer was attempting to hide her/his tracks.**

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She’s 22-year-old woman who has graduated from a large state university and is headed to a prestigeous dental school.

Yet in the eyes of DeSoto Sun headline editors, she’s a “girl.” How cute. How wrong.

The DeSoto Sun this morning carries an apparently plagiarized story in the local section (page 4), headlined “Tips for handling fireworks safely.” The by-line is “Staff Report.” The story is a word-for-word copy of a page posted by the City of North Port on its copyrighted Web site, City of North Port (Fla.) Dot Com. The DeSoto Sun’s Staff Reporter has not acknowledged the story’s source, the circumstances of its reprinting, and does not feel the urge to share with readers whether permission (perhaps?) was given to publish the municipal writer’s research, words, and ideas.

A core tenet of journalism: Honest, ethical reporters tell readers where they got their information. In all but the rarest of circumstances, they accurately identify sources.

Can someone plagiarize anonymously? Sure. Readers just don’t know who, precisely, the plagiarist is. For lack of a by-line in this case, readers must credit the publisher and perhaps his section editors with this particularly noxious form of reader deception.

The page designers stayed late last night.

Page 6 in the main section this morning carries the banner “Florida Report,” and the page is anchored with an array of news briefs. The design is dominated by an outline map of Florida crisscrossed with oddly angled lines tipped with arrows to “link” a news brief to a city on the map.

Now, newspaper readers are quite familiar, after all these years, with the convention of using a story’s “dateline” as a place reference. And maps of Florida are easy to come by. There are the folded versions in the SUV’s glove box and the colorful ones in our children’s textbooks lying on the hall table. From the household’s almanac or atlas to the Internet, Florida and its cities are not mysteries.

So why does the state map occupy the largest, most eye-catching place on the page? How exactly does a block of news become more informative if an arrow directs the reader’s eye to a dot labeled Jacksonville? What readers like are those helpful thumbnail maps that savvy editors insert into specific stories to clarify a highway extension project or the sale of a 4,300-acre ranch somewhere up the road. But a one-third-page huge map of the whole state? You gotta be kidding. You could have given us three more fresh news briefs instead.

The story arrows themselves create a mish-mosh of random angles that bisect the state at distracting angles. The information is about as orderly as a pile of Pick Up Stix.

Strangely, some stores don’t qualify for an arrow at all. Merritt Island isn’t on the map and so the stingray-stabs-man story doesn’t rate an arrow. This implies Sun editor-designers won’t bother to add a dot on the prefabricated map, even when there’s news from the place. How helpful is that?

On the other hand, Tampa is on the map, but the Tampa story doesn’t get a line and an arrow. With today’s graphic, that would make a line to cross a line (a designer’s no-no). So, all the help the other lines might be providing isn’t going to be used with the Tampa story. Design trumps.

The page looks nice if we hang it on a bulletin board and step back about five feet – in other words, it’s an adequate school project. But does it serve the reader? Not by a long shot. In fact, it insults readers because it says (a) they don’t know where Naples is and (b) they need an arrow on the map to find it.

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DeSoto County residents, taxpayers and newspaper subscribers can all live better today

because their local news editor “survived” her “first high school reunion.”

Readers and residents concerned about the effectiveness of the county commission under its new administrator read not about the schools, local economy, assessments, taxes, or crumbling county roads and weedy drainage ditches, but about the editor’s pre-party pimple eruption – “a zit” that in the alleged words of the editor’s quoted-but-unnamed best friend, appeared “just like high school.” And, lest readers think geography might provide the local connection – perhaps a high school somewhere in the paper’s circulation area – the unnamed reunion assembled in St. Petersburg.

DeSoto County residents, taxpayers and newspaper subscribers learn the editor found everyone at the reunion “so much nicer than expected,” and she had “unexpectedly deep conversations with unexpected people.” (Old Word Wolf asks who, exactly, was “unexpected” at the reunion – Michelle Obama?)

The reunion taught the editor “how many people actually knew of Arcadia and where it was.” (Was? Not still is?) The editor reports to residents, taxpayers and her subscribers that her “best conversations” at the reunion happened with the dates and spouses of former classmates except “the aloof, beautiful girl from the Ukraine who met her date online and made no attempt to conceal her boredom.” (The “girl” is unnamed and unattributed, exemplifying local journalism standards. The “girl” is old enough to go as a date to a 10-year class reunion but not old enough to be classified as a woman. )

There’s 20 inches more. But in the end, residents, taxpayers and newspaper subscribers all are better citizens because they know the editor’s high school chums all “have so much better taste in hairstyles and clothing now.”

Dear Sun Publisher: Could we get a columnist/editor out here who is willing to interview someone besides herself and her best friend? Your readers and subscribers want thoughtful opinions posed by well-informed reporters and editors who care about local government, schools, and the quality of life for folks who aren’t necessarily all white, middle-class “girls” enjoying a “dream job” that includes a hospital plan and air conditioning.

The page designers stayed late last night. Page 6 in the main section this morning carries the banner “Florida Report,” and the page chock-a-block with news briefs. The design is dominated by an outline map of Florida crisscrossed with oddly angled lines tipped with arrows to “link” a news brief to a city on the map.

Now, newspaper readers are quite familiar, after all these years, with the convention of using a story’s “dateline” as a place reference. And maps of Florida are easy to come by. There are the folded versions in the SUV’s glove box and the colorful ones in our children’s textbooks lying on the hall table. From the household’s almanac or atlas to the Internet, Florida and its cities are not mysteries.

So why does the state map occupy the largest, most eye-catching place on the page? How exactly does a block of news become more informative if an arrow directs the reader’s eye to a dot labeled Jacksonville? What readers like are those helpful thumbnail maps that savvy editors insert into specific stories to clarify a highway extension project or the sale of a 4,300-acre ranch somewhere up the road. But a one-third-page huge map of the whole state? You gotta be kidding. You could have given us three more fresh news briefs instead.

The story arrows themselves create a mish-mosh of random angles that bisect the state at distracting angles. The information is about as orderly as a pile of Pick Up Stix.

Strangely, some stores don’t qualify for an arrow at all. Merritt Island isn’t on the map and so the stingray-stabs-man story doesn’t rate an arrow. This implies Sun editor-designers won’t bother to add a dot on the prefabricated map, even when there’s news from the place. How helpful is that?

On the other hand, Tampa is on the map, but the Tampa story doesn’t get a line and an arrow. With today’s graphic, that would make a line to cross a line (a designer’s no-no). So, all the help the other lines might be providing isn’t going to be used with the Tampa story. Design trumps.

The page looks nice if we hang it on a bulletin board and step back about five feet – in other words, it’s an adequate school project. But does it serve the reader? Not by a long shot. In fact, it insults readers because it says (a) they don’t know where Naples is and (b) they need an arrow on the map to find it.

Dear Publisher: Yes, readers like attractive, inviting pages. But the Sun has looked so awful for so long that we’ve gotten used to it. Really. Remember when they used to call the New York Times “the gray lady?” Design is nice but news is better.

Find us good reporters and clear writers. Send them out to cover city hall, the sheriff’s departments; ask them to visit our schools. Teach them how to read budgets, cultivate sources, and cross ethinic lines to reach people in our community who aren’t pink and didn’t go to college. On the human-interest side, let your reporters know readers want more than another “disease of the week” story that ends with a plea for money.

Let your reporters know readers want to know about the men and women who populate the numerous boards and quasi-governmental committees — before we get all that interesting stuff in an obituary.

If you want to put all this on a pretty page with a big map, fine. But don’t confuse design with substance.

DeSoto County residents, taxpayers and newspaper subscribers can all live better today because their local news editor “survived” her “first high school reunion.”

Readers and residents concerned about the effectiveness of the county commission under its new administrator read not about the schools, local economy, assessments, taxes, or crumbling county roads and weedy drainage ditches, but about the editor’s pre-party pimple eruption – “a zit” that in the alleged words of the editor’s quoted-but-unnamed best friend, appeared “just like high school.” And, lest readers think geography might provide the local connection – perhaps a high school somewhere in the paper’s circulation area – the unnamed reunion assembled in St. Petersburg.

DeSoto County residents, taxpayers and newspaper subscribers learn the editor found everyone at the reunion “so much nicer than expected,” and she had “unexpectedly deep conversations with unexpected people.” (Old Word Wolf asks who, exactly, was “unexpected” at the reunion – Michelle Obama?)

The reunion taught the editor “how many people actually knew of Arcadia and where it was.” (Was? Not still is?) The editor reports to residents, taxpayers and her subscribers that her “best conversations” at the reunion happened with the dates and spouses of former classmates except “the aloof, beautiful girl from the Ukraine who met her date online and made no attempt to conceal her boredom.” (The “girl” is unnamed and unattributed, exemplifying local journalism standards. The “girl” is old enough to go as a date to a 10-year class reunion but not old enough to be classified as a woman. )

There’s 20 inches more. But in the end, residents, taxpayers and newspaper subscribers all are better citizens because they know the editor’s high school chums all “have so much better taste in hairstyles and clothing now.”

Dear Sun Publisher: Could we get a columnist/editor out here who is willing to interview someone besides herself and her best friend? Your readers and subscribers want thoughtful opinions posed by well-informed reporters and editors who care about local government, schools, and the quality of life for folks who aren’t necessarily all white, middle-class “girls” enjoying a “dream job” that includes a hospital plan and air conditioning.

A letter to the editor this morning complains about a stand taken by “Rep. Harrell” regarding abortion and property rights. None of Charlotte Sun’s wide-awake, reader-oriented editors bothered to insert the representative’s party affiliation, district and first name — those would be Republican, District 81, and Gayle B.

The same wide-awake, reader-oriented editors didn’t notice the letter comes from a man mad as a horse with a burr under his tail – in Stuart.

The same wide-awake, reader-oriented editors ignored the geographic relationship between their employer’s newspaper-circulation area and Ms. Harrell’s district – about 200 miles and Lake Okechobee separate them.

Folks in DeSoto County (Florida House District 71) have grown accustomed to reading letters sounding off about news in Charlotte, North Port, Englewood, Venice, and even Sarasota, that energize readers in other Dunn-Rankin zones but which didn’t run in the happy-news-only edition. But trying to pawn off Stuart news, even out here, is a bit much.

Thanks to My Florida dot gov for the educational use of its map.

And here’s the 58-word column lede, in all its new-grammar glory:

It’s amazing how the EARS Animal Rescue Sanctuary nonprofit organization and its board and volunteers have networked with many local residents about its wants and vital need for approval from our commissioners on a 25-acre site for the nonprofit’s vision of a care-for-life facility that would be home for abandoned, mistreated or neglected domesticated animals.

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“In place of the Morse code question, the radio operators written test will have more technical questions in place of the Morse Code. The written test has become more difficult.” – John Lawhorne

“She was born March 13, 1922 in Arlington, Va., [... she] was a 1914 graduate from Washington-Lee High school.” – Sugrue obituary

“Risk factors for community-acquired CA-MRSA include those of a young age as children’s immune systems are not fully developed or they do not yet have antibodies to common germs. CA-MRSA has crept into both amateur and professional sports teams as the bacteria spread easily through cuts, abrasions and skin-to-skin contact. Living in crowded or unsanitary conditions attribute to the risk factor as outbreaks of CA-MRSA have occurred in military training camps and in prisons.” – Jana Lynn Filip

“…a 1,400 square foot home uses zero electricity. The solar panels handle all electric costs.” – Lang Capasso

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