January 28, 2002
He’s a witch! Burn him! Caught up in the whole plagiarism craze that’s sweeping the nation (or at least The Weekly Standard, a pair of intrepid bloggers pounced on Slate writer Tim Noah, a potentially delicious target because of his recent articles about the plagiarism epidemic.
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), it turns out that Noah had quoted Robert Novak properly, but the proper html tags had been deleted in the (admittedly misleading) MSNBC posting of the article, eliminating the blockquote indentations, making it appear as though Noah had lifted large chunks of text directly from Novak. Both bloggers quickly acknowledged the error with apologetic updates (as opposed to my what I might have done, which would have been to delete the offending posts, hope that Google hadn't cached them yet, and then put up about 25 other links and cheesecake shots as a distraction), and will almost certainly check a few more sources before going forth with their next scoop, a fine lesson for all of us would-be muckrakers.
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), it turns out that Noah had quoted Robert Novak properly, but the proper html tags had been deleted in the (admittedly misleading) MSNBC posting of the article, eliminating the blockquote indentations, making it appear as though Noah had lifted large chunks of text directly from Novak. Both bloggers quickly acknowledged the error with apologetic updates (as opposed to my what I might have done, which would have been to delete the offending posts, hope that Google hadn't cached them yet, and then put up about 25 other links and cheesecake shots as a distraction), and will almost certainly check a few more sources before going forth with their next scoop, a fine lesson for all of us would-be muckrakers.
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