Saturday, April 3, 2010

Recycling Center: NYT's Seth Mydans Takes Chunks Of February IHT Profile, Adds New Lede, And Publishes Today As "New" NYT Story.

Is it okay for NYT reporters to recycle their writing from old International Herald Tribune stories into new NYT ones?

Apparently it's okay for Seth Mydans, the NYT's longtime Asia correspondent, who lifted nearly half of an IHT profile he published in February, and refashioned the material into a different article on the same person published in today's NYT.

The story -- a look at female Cambodian opposition leader Mu Sochua -- appears as today's "Saturday Profile" in the NYT's international pages.

The two stories have different ledes and some different reporting; by a rough estimate, half of today's story reflects new writing and research. But the other half is an almost word-for-word lift from the earlier piece, which ran as part of an IHT series called "The Female Factor."

The NYT owns the IHT, and the two papers share much in content. But while the papers routinely share news coverage, it isn't clear whether the NYT permits reporters to take old IHT stories and rewrite them into NYT stories, without alerting the reader.

Both stories are available on the NYT website, with no indication of any re-use or overlap.

In this instance, we at The NYTPicker clearly remember reading Mydans's story -- his original story on Mu Sochua, that is -- on the NYT website in February. We actually recalled the amusing quote at the end ("I voted for you, but don't tell anyone," a voter told Mu Sochua while handing her a guava), which is identical in both versions.

What we find most troubling here is that Mydans took his original material and shoveled it into his new piece without any indication to readers that much of his reporting had appeared weeks ago, and since gone slightly stale.

Mydans lifted phrases like "most recently" and "the other day" from the old version to the new, suggesting to readers that his reporting reflected recent comments and events. But in fact, Mydans clearly did much of his reporting on this story in February -- not "recently" or "the other day" by any stretch of the imagination.

We realize that the NYT and the IHT are merging their news gathering operations as much as possible. The NYT has even merged the former IHT website into the NYT website's new global edition. It makes sense that the NYT would occasionally want to pick up articles from IHT for the NYT, just as the IHT so often does in reverse.

But in this case -- which strikes us as unusual -- the NYT took a six-week-old page-one IHT feature and allowed the reporter to pass it off to NYT readers as new, by letting him change some sections, like the lede. The repetitions don't begin until a third of the way into the piece.

The odd notion of "self-plagiarism" has been widely discussed in academic circles, and some include it routinely on lists of ethical transgressions. One objection to it is that by lifting identical passages from one publication to another, it becomes confusing to researchers looking for original source material.

Indeed, in this case, a researcher unfamiliar with the financial ties between the two newspapers would likely be baffled by the repetition of portions of the previous piece, with a different lede, headline, thesis, etc.

Wouldn't it have been simpler, and more straightforward, for the NYT to have simply reprinted Mydans's original February piece, with a notation that it appeared originally in IHT?

It's the surreptitious nature -- and ease -- of cut-and-paste practices that have prompted so many recent cries of plagiarism, including the ones that resulted in the recent resignation of NYT business reporter Zachery Kouwe.

The NYT could avoid such problems with a policy of full disclosure when it recycles material from its wholly-owned subsidiaries in its flagship newspaper.

Here's one example (there are others) of an extended, nearly-identical passage from the two stories.

From the Feb. 22, 2010 IHT article:

And so she paused the other day at the stoop of a little cafe here in this riverside village, an open-fronted noodle shop where men sat in the midday heat on red plastic chairs.

She had succeeded in halting a sand-dredging project that was eroding riverbanks here, and she wanted the men to know that she had been working on their behalf.

“I came here to inform you that you got a result from the government,” she told the men, showing them a legal document. “I want to inform you that you have a voice. If you see something wrong, you can stand up and speak about it.”

Asked afterward what it was like to have a woman fighting his battles, Mol Sa, 37, a fisherman, said, “She speaks up for us, so I don’t think she’s any different from a man. Maybe a different lady couldn’t do it, but she can do it because she is strong and not afraid.”

Fear was a theme as Ms. Mu Sochua moved through the countryside here. At another village, where cracks were appearing in the sandy embankment, a widow named Pal Nas, 78, said the big dredging boats had scared her.

“I’m afraid that if I speak out, they will come after me,” she said. “In the Khmer Rouge time, they killed all the men. When night comes, I don’t have a man to protect me. It’s more difficult if you are a woman alone.”

Mr. Hun Sen’s party holds power throughout most of rural Cambodia, and Ms. Mu Sochua said that party agents kept an eye on her as she campaigned.

Before she boarded the little boat to cross the river, a man on a motorcycle took photographs of her and her companions with a cellphone, then drove away.

Across the river, a farmer greeted her warmly, climbing a tree to pick ripe guavas for her.

“I voted for you,” he said as he handed her the fruit. “But don’t tell anyone.”

From today's NYT profile, with some small changes and additions:

She paused politely the other day at the stoop of a small open-fronted noodle shop in this riverside village, where men sat in the midday heat on red plastic chairs. She let her male assistants enter first.

She had succeeded in halting a sand-dredging project that was eroding riverbanks here, and she wanted the men to know that she had been working on their behalf. “I came here to inform you that you got a result from the government,” she told the men, showing them a legal document. “I want to inform you that you have a voice. If you see something wrong, you can stand up and speak about it.”

Asked afterward what it was like to have a woman fighting his battles, Mol Sa, 37, a fisherman, said, “She speaks up for us, so I don’t think she’s any different from a man. Maybe a different lady couldn’t do it, but she can do it because she is strong and not afraid.”

Fear was a theme as Ms. Mu Sochua moved through the countryside here.

At another village where cracks were appearing in the sandy embankment, a widow named Pal Nas, 78, said the big dredging boats had scared her.

“I’m afraid that if I speak out they will come after me,” she said. “In the Khmer Rouge time they killed all the men. When night comes I don’t have a man to protect me. It’s more difficult if you are a woman alone.”

Mr. Hun Sen’s ruling party holds power through most of rural Cambodia, and Ms. Mu Sochua said party agents kept an eye on her as she campaigned. At one point a man on a motorbike took photographs of her and her companions with a mobile telephone, then drove away.

Later, as the sun began to set, a farmer greeted her warmly, calling out to his wife and climbing a tree to pick ripe guavas for her.

“I voted for you,” he said as he handed her the fruit. “But don’t tell anyone.”

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't necessarily assume that Seth Mydans is to blame. I have written stories for the NYT in the past which have later (days? weeks?) appeared in a reworked form in the IHT without me being involved in the process. The two papers have shared copy for years. I think the problem you are raising is more likely to be blamed on editors than on whoever's byline appears on a shared story.

howard gates said...

Your trivial criticism of the article speaks of your pathetic jealous nature and in our conception, the author is a rare example of outstanding professionalism and brilliance in his field.