iMediaEthics wrote last week about Joe Valley, who plagiarized from the American Diabetes Association’s website in his story for the Charlotte Sun newspaper.
We wrote to Valley and the Charlotte Sun for comment but still haven’t heard back. We have heard back from the blogger who spotted the plagiarism, Old Word Wolf. She wrote that she also hasn’t heard from the Charlotte Sun in response to her e-mail letting the newspaper’s publisher, senior editors and writer know of the plagiarism.
“As usual, no reply, although my blog’s stat-counter showed some page viewing from their ISP address shortly after the note hit their inboxes,” Old Word Wolf wrote.
We asked what prompted her to check the story for plagiarism. Old Word Wolf responded:
“Simply reading the text makes it clear that the prose has been edited to perfect vanilla prose — not an adverb in sight, short declarative sentences and nary a writer’s tic or dependent clause on the page. Prose like that always prompts me to plug a couple of sentences into Google Advance Search. This time, as so many others, the original professional site pops up along with a number of other ‘medical’ and ‘doctor’ pages that also seem to have used the word-for-word information.”
Old Word Wolf also said that she’s noticed “more than 60 documented cases of plagiarism by my reading alone” at the Charlotte Sun. iMediaEthics has written again to the Charlotte Sun asking for comment and will update with any response.