{"id":8537,"date":"2019-02-11T09:14:02","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T15:14:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/csuiteold.c-suitenetwork.com\/advisors\/?p=8537"},"modified":"2019-02-11T09:14:02","modified_gmt":"2019-02-11T15:14:02","slug":"plagiarism-or-sloppiness-what-happened-to-jill-abramsons-merchants-of-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csuiteold.c-suitenetwork.com\/advisors\/plagiarism-or-sloppiness-what-happened-to-jill-abramsons-merchants-of-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Plagiarism or Sloppiness: What Happened to Jill Abramson’s Merchants of Truth?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Editor: <\/strong>Fix,<\/span> Correct,<\/span> Heal Yourself!
\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Former New York Times editor Jill Abramson is in the spotlight with her new book Merchants of Truth<\/em> for all the wrong reasons.<\/p>\n

Abramson has been accused of plagiarizing a number of passages in the book from other previously published material. Her initial response was to categorically deny this had happened. However, after reporter Michael Moynihan posted tweets showing several passages from Abramson\u2019s book side-by-side with nearly identical content from other sources, Abramson pulled back, \u201creviewed the situation,\u201d and is having the errors fixed.<\/p>\n

What happened here?<\/h4>\n

It\u2019s highly doubtful that someone with as long and distinguished a journalistic career as Abramson set out to purposely plagiarize others\u2019 material in her own book. The passages cited are background and context setting material that would not be of issue had they been tagged with footnotes that referenced the original published source. Without the footnotes or references, however, the passages appear to be Abramson\u2019s work when they really are not.<\/p>\n

It looks like one of the industry\u2019s best known editors missed the boat when it came to the editing of her own book. The question is how<\/em> could something like this happen.<\/p>\n

The book was published by Simon & Schuster\u2014a well-established publishing house. How did this get through the various editors and reviewers who looked over the manuscript?\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps someone along the way made the presumption that the work of a former New York Times<\/em> editor didn\u2019t need as much review and editing. Or perhaps someone was trying to save a few dollars by outsourcing this to the least costly resource available. Or trying to move too quickly and got sloppy.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve edited and proofed a number of nonfiction books, some commercially published, some self-published, on a variety of topics. Often, I\u2019m brought in to salvage a book after another editor (possibly offshore) has supposedly reviewed the manuscript, but errors remain. Some of these authors are fairly distinguished, highly educated, experts in their fields. Regardless, their work still needs review and editing.<\/p>\n

Some times I find grammatical or punctuation errors. Other times I see repetitive phrases or unclear sentence structure. Still other times, I find problems with narrative flow or continuity.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly not unusual for me to find situations like Abramson\u2019s where attribution is missing. I flag these and direct the author to reference the source and add the proper attribution through a footnote or endnote.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what good editors do, but for whatever reason, it didn\u2019t happen here.<\/p>\n

There are several lessons here for anyone who produces work to be published:<\/p>\n