On June 13th, 2005 I posted the first blog entry for the site that would eventually become Plagiarism Today. Though the site itself would not actually go “live” for another month and a half, on August 2nd, I was blogging on this topic in semi-secret beginning on that day.

The first post wasn’t much, just a praise for GreatestJournal, which is now defunct, and their handling of plagiarism matters.

I had no idea what would become of PT then or what it would grow to become. Now, five years later, the site is updated an average of 8-10 times per week, plays host to a weekly podcast, with my co-host Patrick O’Keefe and also saw the genesis of my copyright and plagiarism consulting practice, which is now my full-time (and a bit beyond) job.

It’s been a long and strange ride for me but has definitely helped bring me some of my greatest moments and favorite memories. I am eternally grateful for this site and, even more so, for the people who read it and support it.

So, to those of you who have been reading this site the whole time or just arrived, thank you for your support. Your feedback, your comments and your business have meant the world to me. Thank you all.

For those that want to know a bit more about the story of PT, as I take the time to look back over the years, feel free to read on. To the rest, thank you again for all of your support and time and I will be back tomorrow with a more traditional PT post.

Getting Started

I began thinking about Plagiarism Today in the summer of 2005. I had been dealing with plagiarists of my work for several years and had become quite good at it. However, I was starting to get into blog reading and was enjoying my first experiences with an RSS reader.

I was eager to find a Web site that dealt with this topic as it was at least a important part of my life and something I felt strongly about. However, after days of off and on searching, I found many static resources but no blogs or news sites.

So, at the encouragement of my significant other, I decided to create a site on the topic and see what happened. However, I didn’t want Plagiarism Today to be a blog that was worked on for a few months and then abandoned so I resolved to blog in private for a period of time to make sure I had enough to talk about. So, I set up a WordPress installation in a subfolder of my then-existing site and went for it.

However, I made a goof in that I didn’t disable pingbacks or search engines and was stunned to find my “hidden” blog getting a modest amount of traffic. I decided to push it live early and did so August 2nd. The blog, at that point with its hideous “desert” theme, which you can see here got its own domain and own update schedule. The site was, years later updated to the “Knights” layout that you can see here before finally moving to the current theme (I believe I’ve traded up each time).

The timing for the launch could not have been much worse though. As a New Orleanian, August 29th, just four weeks later, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and turned the lives of me and my wife upside down. Though our home was unaffected, it destroyed previous career plans and forced us into a month-long exile, three weeks of that evacuated and another week living in a city without much in the way of access.

But during the evacuation time, I largely credit Plagiarism Today for keeping me sane. Though I was deep in the upstate with only dial up access, I threw myself into the site almost 24/7 during those weeks, updating daily and trying not to think about the devastation to my city and, quite possibly, losing everything.

After getting back from the storm, I spent the next six months leading a somewhat nomadic lifestyle. Working various jobs to help rebuild New Orleans and, eventually, Key West. I lived in three different states over those months and routinely worked 12-hour days, yet, I still found time to keep up PT as much as possible, working on growing the site during down time and off hours.

But even though the site was seeing decent growth, it didn’t seem to be gaining any significant traction, that changed in May of 2006.

First Publicity

On May 8, 2006, reporter Maura Welch talked about Plagiarism Today in her article about online plagiarism for the Boston Globe. This was only possible thanks to the efforts of Beth from Cursed to First, who I had helped with a plagiarism case before.

The story caused a spike in traffic to Plagiarism Today and opened a floodgate of other media mentions (only a fraction of which are actually included on that page).

This traction led to a spike in traffic and subscribers to my blog, leading to a nearly 3x jump in the number of visitors and subscribers.

The momentum has remained upward ever since. To this day, I credit both Beth and Maura for much of the success of the site as, without their mentioning of PT, it is unclear when, if or how PT would have gained the following it did.

Starting a Business

Many people ask when I decided to open up a consulting business related to PT, however, there is no firm date for that decision.

When I started Plagiarism Today, I never envisioned it being a money-making site. My goal was to help like-minded people in similar situations and it remains as such. But companies and businesses began to approach me for more and more complicated and hands-on jobs and it became necessary to charge for my time.

Eventually, I was hired full-time by the copyright services firm CopyByte, a company I have since broken apart from its parent and taken the helm of myself.

When consulting, I’ve always worked to keep my rates low and still, whenever I do have the time, agree to help others with immediate needs for free, especially if they are interested in learning and doing it themselves. In short, to those who want help resolving their own cases, I’ve tried to make myself available for free as much as possible. To those who want me to take care of things for them, I’ve managed to build a decent consulting and services practice.

In addition to consulting, I’ve also done a great deal of speaking over the past few years, including talks at two WordCamp Dallas events (plus I am speaking at the upcoming OpenCamp event in August), I spoke at the 3rd International Plagiarism Conference in the UK, at an Innovation Journalism conference in the Netherlands, ConvergeSouth and many other events.

Without this site, I doubt I would have made half the friends that I have, travelled to a fraction of the places that I have or had nearly as many cherished memories. For that, I am eternally grateful.

Looking Forward

It has been a wonderful five years for Plagiarism Today and, though it might not have grown as large as some sites started around the same time, it has done very well for me. It has given me all that I ever dreamed for it and more.

Once again, this would not have been possible without the support of you and others like you. Thank you again for all that you do for this site and, through that, for me. It means the world.

Moving forward with PT, I have several major announcements in the works, at least three of which should be ready to launch sometime within the next few weeks, so stay tuned there. In the meantime, thank you all for your support and I’m looking forward to the next five years of Plagiarism Today!

I watched the story unfold on the news. I remember cheering when I heard that the storm had veered at the last moment away from the city, I then remember getting the first, isolated, reports of flooding followed soon by the now-famous images of the rushing water and the city submerged. I watched as people were plucked from their rooftops, as entire neighborhoods submerged and the city I had grown to love was nearly drowned.

What had, prior to that point, been just another evacuation became a desperate quest for information. We searched the Web, worked the phones and, more than anything else, remained fixated to the television hoping to learn something about our home, our friends and our family.

We would find out later that we were among the lucky ones. Our home was away from the worst of the flooding. It suffered only minor wind damage and we moved back into it within three weeks. However, the lives we knew before Katrina were gone. We returned to a different city, an empty town where military humvees patrolled the streets and army helicopters passed with startling regularity. It was a place where MREs were the only reliable food and if you saw another person while walking through the city, you struck up a conversation, and worked to help your fellow man.

There was no time to dwell on the changes. Hurricane Rita passed underneath the city a few days after our return and we were trapped in the city. Nowhere to evacuate too, we stayed put and hoped for the best. Fortunately, though it was another terrifying night, it worked out for the best and we were once again spared the worst.

After that storm passed, we set about helping New Orleans recover. My wife returned to her old job as a legal secretary, working extra hours to help victims of the storm and I, with my old job completely gone, took anything I could find. My first job was cleaning out a damaged Tuesday Morning store. I loaded boxes and helped pack up a tractor-trailer full of salvageable merchandise. It wasn’t about money, it was about doing something, anything to help.

I eventually settled into a slightly more long-term position doing IT work for a Mississippi construction company doing contract work here in Louisiana. It was a simple job, generating reports, keeping communications working, etc., but it involved 84 hour weeks. I worked every day, seven days a week, for 96 days, including Christmas and New Years.

I was determined to see the city come back and I was going to do my small part to make it happen.

However, as I look back over everything that has happened in the past two years, I realize that, in addition to taking so much from me, my friends and my city, it has taught me a great deal too.

If there is a silver lining to Katrina is that we are all stronger and wiser than we were before. However, many of the lessons are ones we can easily share with the world, including these seven that I have no idea how I got along without.

1. The Importance of Humor: During New Orleans’ darkest hour, as the city was flooded and help seemed so far away. Residents who stayed behind renamed their beloved town to “Lake George” after our beloved President. C’est La Levee.
2. You Can’t Trust the News: I could easily dedicate six posts of this length to the inaccuracies in the media during Katrina. For now, just one, the Superdome was not a cesspool of death and gang violence, neither was the Convention Center. Were there desperate people seeking help? Yes. But the reports of crime at both locations were greatly exaggerated.
3. Disasters Bring People Together, Politicians Drive them Apart: Racial tensions in New Orleans have always been high, but immediately following the storm, an atmosphere of cooperation filled the city. That is, until our mayor gave his famous “Chocolate City” speech. Then everything changed for the worse.
4. Government is Incompetent: Poorly-built levees, an inept immediate response and poor recovery planning. It doesn’t matter if it is Federal, state or local, you can only count on your government to provide red tape, not support. Also, in a related area, hold your leaders accountable for your infrastructure. You might live behind a levee or dam even now.
5. Home is Home: People ask me why I still live in the city. I tell them its home. Anyone who has found a home understands that. However, some people have only found a place to live and can’t grasp our staying. I would much rather have a home that was struck by a hurricane than no home at all. I hope some day everyone can relate to that.
6. Why Family Matters: My wife and I were both very lucky to have wonderful family’s that supported us through the disaster. Her family took us in while we were evacuated, mine supplied financial aid until our FEMA money arrived. Without them, I doubt we could have gotten through this.
7. Hope is Everything: When I first got back to the city, the Superdome was black from the damage. I am not much of a sports fan, but the Superdome is a landmark in the city, something I drive by twice a day. Seeing it so badly damaged crushed my heart. So, when I drove by one day and they had placed a temporary, but white, cover on the dome, I had to pull over to wipe the tears from my eyes. It was the first time I had truly felt hope in over a month. When I looked up, two other drivers were doing the exact same thing.

However, the greatest lesson I learned, the eighth one perhaps, is that a little bad weather can not crush the spirit of a great city. New Orleans is coming back, progress is being made. There are still problems to be dealt with, but so much has already been done.

To me, the proof of this is in Mardi Gras. The 2006 Mardi Gras was somber, small, barely even there. This years though, was easily the best I had been to of the seven I’ve attended. The locals were ready to celebrate and the tourists were eager to help us.

The spirit has returned. I now take comfort that, with time, the rest will follow.

That is all that matters to me.

A lot has changed since then, both on this site and on the Web around it. Plagiarism Today is not the project it started out as, but instead, has grown into something much larger and, in my opinion, much more important.

But before I look ahead to what might lie next for PT, I want to first look back at how it started, how it evolved and how it got to be where it is today.

Frustrating Months

Plagiarism Today came out of my own personal battles with plagiarists. By the time I set up the first draft of PT, I had been running sites for eight years, battling plagiarists for three and shut down several hundred rippers.

After searching for several days to find a news site or blog on this topic, and failing miserably, I decided to create one. The niche seemed natural enough and I felt that I had as much expertise “in the trenches” as anyone.

However, the first few months of running Plagiarism Today were very difficult. Though I had expected low readership in the beginning, I didn’t expect people to be openly hostile to the idea.

It seemed that all of the feedback I got were from people who didn’t “get” the idea. “This site is stupid, you’re wasting your time,” one emailer said. “It’s pointless,” said another.

This attitude was echoed in Plagiarism Today’s first major media mention, which was on the TWiT podcast. Several of the hosts wondered aloud “Where all of the plagiarism was at” and were concerned that my site was just an exercise in futility.

Worse still was that, when the site wasn’t being blasted as pointless, it was being dragged into petty flame wars as with the Wicked Wanda plagiarism case.

Combined with the effects of Hurricane Katrina, I considered shutting the site down to focus on other ventures.

Still, somehow, I kept going. Even as day jobs had me traveling around the country working 84 hour weeks, I did my best to keep up, posting articles, answering emails and doing the best that I could, hoping that the site would gain significant traction soon.

Fortunately, the answer to my prayers were closer at hand than I realized.

In The Spotlight

Ever since I had started PT, I had made it a habit to patrol the Web, especially blogs, looking for posts about content theft or plagiarism and offering help. By May in 2006, this labor had already produced some fruits.

I had already found allies in the craft blogging community as well as among sex bloggers. However, it would be another group, sports bloggers that would provide the biggest boost to the site.

Previously I had posted a comment on a Red Sox blog, Cursed to First, that was discussing theft of their content. Though I was too late to provide any help with stopping the plagiarism, I did provide some post-mortem analysis in an attempt to help.

The owner of the blog, Beth, never forgot about what I did. When Maura Welch of the Boston Globe interviewed her about the theft, Beth mentioned my name. A short time later Maura called me and on the eighth of May she published an article featuring Plagiarism Today both prominently and positively.

Though it turned out to be only the first of many mentions of Plagiarism Today in the mainstream media, it was a huge tipping point. Subscriptions, which had been very stagnant, shot up three fold overnight and Plagiarism Today was shining bright in the public eyes. Best of all, almost all of the attention was favorable.

Since then, PT has been featured in the Christian Science Monitor, Dose Magazine (Canada), The Guardian (UK) and dozens of smaller publications, including several trade ones.

Of course, not all of the publicity has been positive. The appearance by PT on Slashdot was extremely unfavorable, not to mention fatal to the site. However, I decided not to dwell on the negative attention my worst-written article received. By that point, the forward momentum was too strong and I had other things to do.

A Shift in Focus

A lot of this success can be attributed to a shift in focus of the site. Early on, it was supposed to be a site about plagiarism and plagiarism-related news on the Web. For example, Kaavya Viswanathan and her scandal was an early staple of the site.

However, even by that time, the focus had begun to shift. Plagiarism news was only covered weekly and in a “Wrap Up” format while other stories began to take center stage.

What was once a blog about all plagiarism issues was now focusing almost solely on issues affecting Webmasters and bloggers. Those issues were expanded to cover all forms of content theft, not just plagiarism, including scraping, spam blogging and image hotlinking.

That, in turn, where Plagiarism Today has been for the past year or so, working with Webmasters, companies and organizations to raise awareness and create solutions to help artists, writers and musicians who post their work on the Web get the credit they deserve.

That part is ongoing and will continue to be for some time.

Reflections

Plagiarism Today is not an A-list blog by any stretch of the imagination. It has never seen the success, traffic-wise or financially of a TechCrunch or GigaOm. The niche, it appears, is just too small.

After two years on this site, I jokingly say all I have to show for it is an overdrawn bank account, frayed nerves and a lot of friends. But it is the latter in that group that has kept me going. In short, the people I’ve met and worked with are, almost certainly, the sole reason I keep working as hard as I do.

Yes, I have managed to eek out a modest secondary income between donations, consulting work and paid blogging, but it has left me far short of wealthy or even well-off.

If I were in this for the money, I would have been gone over a year ago.

In the end, the reason I stick around is you, the reader. So I want to take this opportunity to say thank you for all of your support of myself and this site. Your emails, comments and donations have meant more to me than you probably realize.

Without you, there would be no Plagiarism Today. It is that simple.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for all that you have done. I greatly look forward to sharing the next two years with you as well and I can not wait to see where this site takes us next.

If nothing else, this should be very exciting.

Update: In addition to the aforementioned appearances in the media, Plagiarism Today just made an apperance today on Cnet.