The Arkansas Traveler Online Edition website, from the University of Arkansas’s school newspaper, finally notices the trend of fratire. More than 16 months after Warren St. John from The New York Times coined the phrase. The odd thing about the Arkansas article isn’t so much the lateness of their notice. But instead it’s the similarities that caught my attention. Repackaging anyone?
On April 16, 2006, The New York Times published St. John’s article entitled “Dude, Here’s My Book.” Now, more than a year later, the Arkansas publication posted an article by Adam O’Hern entitled “Dude, Where’s My Book?”
St. John points out Tucker Max, Maddox, and Neil Strauss as representative of the genre. O’Hern writes the “genre is highlighted by names such as Tucker Max… Maddox… and Neil Strauss.”
St. John called Max a “boozer, lothario and admitted Class A jerk” a year ago. O’Hern described him as “a lothario who writes about getting drunk” earlier this week.
St. John wrote, “Mr. Max said that despite receiving approximatly 60,000 visitors daily at TuckerMax.com, he got ‘zero interest’ when he initially pitched his book.” O’Hern writes about Max that, ”Despite having more than 60,000 hits to his Web site each day, he received no interest when he first pitched his book deal, he said.”
In St. John’s article a year ago, he reveals that Maddox’s real name is George Ouzomanian. And he writes, “‘I’m saying things people think about but don’t say,’ Mr. Ouzomanian said.” In the Arkansas Traveler article, there is the following passage: “‘I’m saying things that people think but don’t say,” said Maddox, whose real name is George Ouzomanian.”
The Arkansas Traveler article quotes heavily from a Tucker Max piece on Huffington Post so you can refer there for more of Max’s opinions and see how they were woven into the newspaper article.
This article would be a lot easier to find on Google if you’d included the word “plagiarism”.
Have you brought this to the attention of the Editor at the Arkansas Traveler?
I actually don’t know the rules of journalistic attribution and credit. So I hesitate to use the word plagiarism. At first glance, it seems pretty cut and dried.
However, there was a Rolling Stone article several months ago that frustrated me to no end. It was a cover story that contained not a single new quote or primary source info. I’m a big fan of the featured artist and assumed there would be new material. But when I read the actual article, there wasn’t anything new. I could have written the article using the books that were on my shelf. And no credit was given to those original publications. If you didn’t already have a shelf full of information about this band, you would have assumed they sat down and talked to the article’s author.
So the point is that I don’t know how much credit you have to give. If Eric Clapton gives an interview to The New York Times, can I use his quotes? Do I have to say, “In previously published interviews, Clapton said x, y, and z” or can I act like he told me those quotes?
And can headlines be considered one’s own work? In this case, the Arkansas article certainly mimics the NYT headline, but are headlines protected in any way?
All of which is to say that although I found the similarities very noticeable, I didn’t feel like I could make any more serious allegations.