Spring Break
An Apology
Issue date: 3/10/08 Section: Forum
Last week, a letter to the editor arrived that pointed out similarities of a Barometer article to a New York Times article on the same subject.
The Daily Barometer strives to teach reporters and staff members good information-gathering practices, honesty and willingness to answer to faults of the paper.
On Feb. 25, the Barometer printed a story titled "Figuring out friends with benefits." In Oct. 2007, Benedict Carey of The New York Times printed a story titled "Friends with benefits, and stress too."
Information from Carey's story was used in the Barometer article, but this information was not appropriately quoted or cited.
A reader pointed out that the Barometer story had passages that were analogous to Carey's piece. She hesitated to use plagiarism as a description of what transpired.
The staff of The Daily Barometer will not hesitate to call this error plagiarism. Taking information from another source without appropriate citations is inexcusable.
We require at least three sources for all of our news stories and we work with our reporters to make sure that they are looking at both sides of each news story.
The author of the Barometer story, "Figuring out friends with benefits," has been suspended until the beginning of next school year.
The editor of the Barometer has decided to take this matter, and all matters of credibility, very seriously.
As a learning institution, we strive to give second chances to those who we feel have made an honest mistake. The Barometer reporter had forgotten to cite The New York Times as a source.
The reporting staff of the Barometer has been fairly warned against plagiarizing material and instructed on how to properly cite sources in a story.
We cannot guarantee that a mistake of this magnitude will never be made again - we stress that the Barometer is a place to learn the craft of journalism - we can promise that we will look carefully into each story, train our reporters and writers appropriately and punish those who fail to follow this code.
The staff of The Daily Barometer would like to sincerely apologize to our readers for plagiarizing a source. Also, we would like to apologize to Benedict Carey, a fellow reporter who's work was plagiarized.
And we would like to thank Lauren Parker, a graduate student in geosciences, for pointing out this egregious error.
The Barometer strives to be fair and accurate in our coverage of the campus and Corvallis community. Please feel free to contact editor-in-chief Lauren L. Dillard at editor@dailybarometer.com
Editorials serve as a means for Barometer editors to offer commentary and opinions on issues both global and local, grand in scale or diminutive. The views expressed here are a reflection of the editorial board's majority.
The Daily Barometer strives to teach reporters and staff members good information-gathering practices, honesty and willingness to answer to faults of the paper.
On Feb. 25, the Barometer printed a story titled "Figuring out friends with benefits." In Oct. 2007, Benedict Carey of The New York Times printed a story titled "Friends with benefits, and stress too."
Information from Carey's story was used in the Barometer article, but this information was not appropriately quoted or cited.
A reader pointed out that the Barometer story had passages that were analogous to Carey's piece. She hesitated to use plagiarism as a description of what transpired.
The staff of The Daily Barometer will not hesitate to call this error plagiarism. Taking information from another source without appropriate citations is inexcusable.
We require at least three sources for all of our news stories and we work with our reporters to make sure that they are looking at both sides of each news story.
The author of the Barometer story, "Figuring out friends with benefits," has been suspended until the beginning of next school year.
The editor of the Barometer has decided to take this matter, and all matters of credibility, very seriously.
As a learning institution, we strive to give second chances to those who we feel have made an honest mistake. The Barometer reporter had forgotten to cite The New York Times as a source.
The reporting staff of the Barometer has been fairly warned against plagiarizing material and instructed on how to properly cite sources in a story.
We cannot guarantee that a mistake of this magnitude will never be made again - we stress that the Barometer is a place to learn the craft of journalism - we can promise that we will look carefully into each story, train our reporters and writers appropriately and punish those who fail to follow this code.
The staff of The Daily Barometer would like to sincerely apologize to our readers for plagiarizing a source. Also, we would like to apologize to Benedict Carey, a fellow reporter who's work was plagiarized.
And we would like to thank Lauren Parker, a graduate student in geosciences, for pointing out this egregious error.
The Barometer strives to be fair and accurate in our coverage of the campus and Corvallis community. Please feel free to contact editor-in-chief Lauren L. Dillard at editor@dailybarometer.com
Editorials serve as a means for Barometer editors to offer commentary and opinions on issues both global and local, grand in scale or diminutive. The views expressed here are a reflection of the editorial board's majority.
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