Ben Domenech Firing a Lesson to All Would-Be Blogger/Plagiarists

The sad case of defrocked Washington Post blogger Ben Domenech should be a lesson to anyone wishing to pursue writing, journalism or even blogging.

Not only is copying other peoples’ material morally reprehensible, it is simply dumb. It wasn’t so easy to detect plagiarism in the old days before computers and the Internet. Editors, college professors and other teachers would have had to possess first-hand knowledge about source material used by an accused copier.

But in this day and age, most plagiarism can be detected in a manner of seconds with a few keystrokes and the unbelieveable reach of the Internet and World Wide Web.

However, no blogger should ever be permitted to go on cut-and-paste rampages with other peoples’ material. Hey, that’s what links are for. If you cite another writer, just link to him or her; then make your own statements vis-à-vis that material.

Martin Luther King Jr. might have gotten away with it, as have many people throughout literary and journalistic history. It’s just something to stay far, far away from. Let’s be sloppy, let’s be inaccurate, let’s use poor or nonexistent grammar, let’s stick it to the man, but let’s not rip off other people.

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