Bloggers Lift from San Francisco Chronicle

I’m a little late to this party, but I wanted to report that Elisa Camahort, co-founder of the Blogher conference, has discovered two bloggers that lifted portions of their reports on the conference straight from the San Francisco Chronicle’s article on the same subject.

Even though the story first hit the Internet on August second, reported at the link above with cited examples, neither blogger has removed the work nor made any clear attempts to modify them. While one of the bloggers hasn’t posted anything new to her site as of this writing and may have abandoned her blog altogether, the other posted an entry dated Aug. 5th, also on the Blogher conference.

(Editor’s Note: This article has been updated below with responses and reactions from the two bloggers involved. Please see those notes for further information.)

What’s surprising to me about this incident is that two bloggers, especially one who has been doing it for nearly two years, would lift from such an obvious source. The conference was held in San Francisco and, since the Chronicle was the local paper for it, the world was turning to it for information. Such a theft was almost destined to be discovered.

Finally, Carrie Kirby, the reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle who’s article was plagiarized, was unaware of the theft until PlagiarismToday contacted her regarding it earlier today. I am still waiting on word as to what action, if any, the Chronicle may take on this matter.

I will be posting updates to this entry and to the blog itself as events unfold. Please stay tuned for further details.

UPDATES:

(08/06/2005) One of the bloggers involved, thecorner, has posted an apology on his blog, modified the entry and sent a letter of apology to Carrie Kirby, the reporter who wrote the article. For further details see his comment below. The other blogger has not written back as of yet.

(08/06/2005) The other blogger, Charlotte, has removed the infringing post and sent this comment to Plagiarism Today: “I would like to apologize for my error in judgement regarding the information on the BlogHer Conference posted on my weblog. In my enthusiasm for the conference and the wonderful things these women were doing, unfortunately I hastily posted information that was not original. It was my intention to write about the conference to promote it, although I never got back to the posting. I am new to blogging, as I began a few weeks ago. The post has been removed. Lesson learned. My intentions were honorable. ”

[tags]Plagiarism, Journalism, Blogging, Content Theft[/tags]