John, how do we even know that you wrote this blog post? Did you perhaps just brand it using your name?

:-)

Incidentally, there was another, similar incidents like this not long ago, albeit a lower-profile one. John, were you actually the person who broke this story to the rest of us?

http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/more/1600/

Something very similar to this happened to me as a high school journalism student. An article I wrote for our school paper appeared (with several minor changes) in a small East-coast magazine a month later. Byline was attributed to the Communications director of the organization. I wrote him a letter pointing this out and would you believe it, never received a reply...

I don't really understand who is wronged here. Students and scholars are forbidden to copy from others' work without attribution precisely because doing so corrupts the evaluation process: their teachers and tenure committees are judging the work of the wrong person. Politicians routinely deliver and publish speeches they didn't write, and are not condemned for this, because we evaluate politicians (supposedly) on their deeds rather than their words.

As far as I can see, there are four possible victims here: Rodale (obviously not, since they approve), the reporters whose bylines were removed (did they sign a contract allowing Rodale to do this?), Zinczenko himself (presumably he's doing this under orders, and he may not like it at all), and the public. I'm not sure which of these you have in mind. Could you elaborate?

It's subterfuge, not branding. Perhaps they just need a good dictionary to help them understand the meaning of words.

On a related note, have you ever tried reading "Eat This, Not That"? I have. It's shallow, unhelpful and horribly written. Why someone would voluntarily put their name to it if not to blame for such drivel is beyond me.

Well, first of all, the public, I guess, JC: they were lied to. The byline is a lie. Well, either that or an overarching tag.

John: I was delighted to see that you mentioned the sainted Stephen Ambrose as a plagiarist. When he died, his instances of cutting and pasting were considered minor faux pas by the obit writers but were in fact quite widespread. Even more alarming for a tenured historian, Ambrose flat out lied about spending substantial time alone with President Eisenhower in preparation for writing Ike's biography. As detailed in a New Yorker article, Eisenhower's schedule shows that, in fact, Ambrose was never alone with Ike at any time. And the man was a professor of history!

By the way, the did you know that Meum and Tuum was the name of the herring lugger that Edward "Omar Khayyam" FitzGerald bought for his friend Joseph "Posh" Fletcher?

Perhaps they should rename the column "Steal This, Not That."

It seems to me, Picky, that a byline indicates the person accountable for what's said, rather than the person who was actually responsible for producing it. After all, it's not like the article came straight from the reporter's keyboard: it's been edited, perhaps heavily.

That's a very fair point, JohnC. And you could add that the work of junior reporters or researchers, or even wire material, might be incorporated within work bylined to a senior reporter.

I remember being somewhat shocked, in my naivety, to read in All the President's Men how far this practice was taken.

The Post's police reporter, Alfred E Lewis 'had never really "written" a story; he phoned the details in to a rewrite man'. After the first hearing of the case against the Watergate burglars 'Eight reporters were involved in putting together the story under the byline of Alfred E. Lewis'.

I don't like any of that. One writer taking responsibility for a collaboration is one thing. A byline that's a piece of fiction is, it seems to me, a piece of fiction.