Forget Journalist Plagiarism, How About Journalists Hiring Others To Ghost Write For Them?

from the this-must-be-the-new-journalism dept

These days, journalistic plagiarism scandals are old hat. Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass... been there, done that. So, now, thanks to Romenesko we get news of a new type of journalism scandal. A columnist who's been accused of hiring a ghost writer to write his columns. Apparently that ghost writer came forward, asking for bylines to be changed to include his name (oops). Still, is this really that bad?

It reminds me of stories from a few years back during the dot com boom when there was some concern about offshoring work to India. Some people jokingly claimed that they hired some folks in India to do their own jobs for them, and were able to make a good living without having to do much work, other than reviewing the work of others. It's not clear if this ever really happened, but would it really be that ridiculous if it did? Yes, there's the moral question of whether or not it was right for this guy to present the work of someone else as his own, but that happens every day. Almost every political speech is written by someone else -- yet no one worries about the ethics there. Books are ghost written all the time. Hell, I've been both asked to ghost write a book for someone else and had someone offer to ghost write a book for me (in the same week, no less!). So, is this really such a big scandal?

Filed Under: ghost writing, plagiarism, ramiro burr