Watch what you borrow

We all probably did it in college, and probably did it in journalism school. Heck, my journalism professor even told us to look through magazines for stories we could steal and rework with our own angle. So it's no surprise to me when I found out that a story I referred to in last week's column, "Oscars blacklist stars in bid to prevent peace protest speeches," in The Scotsman by Annette Witheridge, was basically a rewrite of a story by Lou Lumenick in the New York Post headlined "Acceptance Preaches."

The problem for me was that there was no attribution to the New York Post in the Scotsman article. And, by extension, there were many weblogs that picked up on the Scotsman article (as I did) without crediting the Post. Lumenick himself seemed a bit upset when he first e-mailed me, saying the Scotsman article was "a straight, if unattributed, rewrite of a piece I did." Witheridge does add in a short section about McCarthyism in Hollywood, but so many other parts are similar: the Academy not wanting to upset advertisers; Salma Hayek being the only antiwar presenter (this didn't end up being true); a quote from an Oscar historian; calling Michael Moore a loose cannon and using the same quote from Moore.

I was astonished by the similarities and lack of crediting, and haven't heard back from The Scotsman or Witheridge to elaborate. Lumenick wasn't pointing fingers, and certainly wasn't surprised. "I'm not accusing anybody of plagiarism!" he wrote me. "Recycling is a venerable tradition in the British press, especially among U.S. correspondents and most particularly in entertainment coverage -- and it doesn't offend me a whit. But when a Web site picks up a rewrite of one of my stories, I sometimes bring it to their attention so they can credit the original and not a clone."

I decided to contact a few of the bloggers who had referred to the Scotsman article to let them know about the New York Post article. Some quickly made changes to their weblogs, while others weren't so sure. Charles, who runs Six Different Ways, wrote that "the two articles deal with the same topic, but beyond that, they are different in tone, details, language, and quotations." As for ferreting out these types of cloned stories, Charles said that "the Web is fantastic at cutting through BS and turning up copied work. For big stories, there is simply nothing that compares to the collective resources of many people all looking into the same issue."

So despite the hallowed practice of "recycling" material or "cloning" stories (or whatever you want to call it), entertainment reporters should be careful. With everyone getting global access to global outlets via the Net, a British audience can easily find source material from an American outlet, or vice versa. Yes, the Internet is a great place to do research, see what's been written, get ideas. But it can also bite you in the rear when your rewrite is a little less rewritten than necessary.

The show does go on

Rumors online are often the same as rumors offline: plain wrong. In the case of the Oscars this year, so many rumors were wrong that it got to be embarrassing. First came the pundits who believed the show wouldn't go on -- but it did. Then came reports that Nicole Kidman and many others might not show up at all -- but she did, and most of them did. With the war on, it's not surprising that speculation would swell as it did, and the LA Weekly's Nikki Finke and others called for a boycott by stars.

In the end, the show went on, most everyone showed up, and winners such as Adrien Brody and Roman Polanski for "The Pianist" were the biggest surprises. Most online pundits and commentators were happy that so many underdogs won while the Miramax machine took a severe blow ("Gangs of New York" was 0 for 10). Of course you have the occasional poster saying that Hollywood is so backwards, opposed to bombing in Iraq while honoring an alleged rapist in Polanski.

The bloggers were quick to attack Michael Moore's speech as a repeat from the Independent Spirit Awards, and the Los Angeles Times' Manohla Dargis noted that Moore was booed at the Oscars and cheered at the Indies, which "explains the difference between independent film and Hollywood perfectly." For sarcastic comments, one of the better blogs to follow during the awards show, moment by moment, was Jeff Jarvis and his BuzzMachine. His summation: "What a bust it was."

If you can tolerate opinions of almost every stripe, check out the discussion board over at Plastic, where every Oscar detail gets the once-over, the twice-over, and the thrice-over. The rumors might have been wrong before the show, but the gripes always ring true to someone after the show.