The Hartford Courant: Plagiarism or Just Lazy Journalism?

Thoughts on plagiarism by the Hartford Courant....

I think that it has become general procedure for newspapers to take information from other news sites. I think that better news meaning collaborating with media outlets that are able to focus on a smaller issue or population. However, collaboration implies that the other media outlets were informed that their piece would be used. Also, since it is the larger media organizations putting the smaller ones out of business, it is important that the smaller (collaborating) one get the credit. This means that maybe instead of using the article as a source, the Hartford Courant could have posted a link on their web site. This would be a better method of acknowledging that the Courant is not able to adequately cover everything.

I agree with Matt's line of thought in that I find this to be poor journalism and lazy, but also, not plagiarism. I think that since so many people use web sites as their primary source of information that the creation of a site that combines the resources of several different media outlets would be better than expecting any one organization to cover all the stories to the fullest extent. If more than one organization covers a story, then links can be placed to the different accounts of the story, allowing readers to get a more informed view of the story from different perspectives.