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.

As for blogging and the theory behind it, precision has never been a real priority. Submissions do not go through an editing and fact-checking process. Most blogs are the result of spontaneous “streams of consciousness