On Saturday, October 5, 2013 Lake Breeze Publication’s “Homecoming Festivities Information” was plagiarized by another local news source. Our staff was upset and disappointed over the intellectual theft, and our counterparts at North High were just as upset. Dani Dekker, a North High Student covered the violation of journalistic ethics. We have her permission to republish her story, which originally appeared in North High’s school paper, The NorthStar on Friday, October 11th. You can follow The NorthStar @sheboygannorth or www.nhsnorthstar.com.
Plagiarism
By Dani Dekker
“What’s the difference?” North students read two stories, “Sheboygan South Homecoming Game to Feature Fireworks” and “Homecoming Festivities Information,” and were asked to identify the differences between the two stories. “Am I searching for grammatical errors,” or “ Am I suppose to see a difference?” some students asked. No and no. There were no differences, and that’s the problem. South senior Jesus Rivera wrote “Homecoming Festivities Information,” “Sheboygan South Homecoming Game to Feature Fireworks” was copied directly from the Sheboygan South Lake Breeze website. October 4, 2013 Rivera posted his story on the Lake Breeze site and October 5, 2013 the second story appeared on the SheboyganDaily website saying it was written by Sheboygan Daily Staff. South High School’s Publication adviser, Ms. Tess Larson, said she was “shocked, that another publication would print the story as their own.” Larson contacted Asher Heimermann, the COO of the Sheboygan Daily, about the story and asked him to take it down. He responded in an email to Larson that, “most information in the story can be obtained from several other sources other than the Lake Breeze.” He went on to say in the email that he would not take the story down, because of its “1,300+ views.” Larson said in regards to Heimermann’s message that Heimermann was “Disrespectful, rather than take down the story, they changed the name.” Rivera, the author of the plagiarized story, was asked about his reaction “I was alerted by my advisor Tess Larson that one of our stories had been plagiarized by another website, the SheboyganDaily. I then looked online and found the story was mine. I was shocked by the fact that another news source thought it was journalistically ‘ok’ to take the work from another and publish it as their own. Completely baffled me,” he said. When North students were posed with the same situation, their responses were to be expected. Senior Grace Ratzlaff said she would be,“pretty ticked off, because I don’t like to write, so if I took the time to write something, I would not want anyone to take it.” Senior Jessica Pittner, who is on The Wind staff, agreed. “I would be so mad, if I worked really hard on that,” she said. Not only do students claim they would be upset if it happened to them, but it’s also illegal. Frank LoMonte, from the Student Press Law Center, said, “it is copyright infringement to just cut and paste other people’s work into your own website.” He added, “the Copyright Act makes you the ‘creator’ of that work. As the creator, you have ownership unless you sign a contract to sell or give it away.” Under that Copyright Act, the Sheboygan Daily must remove the story from their website. At the time of this story being published, Rivera ‘s story had not been removed from sheboygandaily.com. An attempt was made to reach Heimermann for a comment regarding this case, but he has yet to respond to that request.