Grant Wahl Tips Us Off On Some Sweet Plagiarism

While browsing the wonderful world of twitter today, we stumbled across this gem, courtesy of Grant Wahl:

Gotta love plagiarism! Basically, Grant Wahl of Sports Illustrated interviewed Didier Drogba. ESPN used parts of the interview and credited SI. John Cross from The Mirror did a straight copy-pasta without providing any commentary or attribution. Then - and this is the best part - he labeled it as an “EXCLUSIVE.”

What’s really funny about this is that The Mirror is, like, a website with real writers with names and faces. And they pay. Yes, it’s a total rag, but it’s a rag that sells advertising and pays people. Sites that do straight copy-pastas without attribution are all over the internet, but they usually have bare bones websites and weird URLs on top of being faceless organizations. They don’t pretend to have actual columnists, they just copy and paste other people’s work for search engine hits and they make a few hundred bucks off ads.

The Mirror pretends to be something better. An actual publication with actual writers. I assume John Cross is a real person who at least pretends to be a football writer. The Mirror at least went through the trouble of finding a picture to attach to a fake name, and there is certainly someone operating the @JohnCrossMirror twitter account. He appears to be an actual human being who actually writes things.

So, all of this begs the question: Why the hell is The Mirror paying people like John Cross to do things that 16 year old minions can do for 10 quid per day? Once again, this is assuming that he is actually an adult who writes about football professionally. Obviously, based on not only this, but many past stories, The Mirror isn’t exactly concerned with being classy. They could put out the same product for way less expenditure.

Obviously, class is never going to be The Mirror’s forte, but I’ve got a suggestion to be classless in a much better way: Do it up Stephen Glass style. Just completely fabricate outrageous stories. It’s a way cooler way to be classless than what you’re doing right now.