Is there an echo out there?

The Northwestern's lead story today, carrying the byline of a staff reporter, remarkably has the same three opening paragraphs as an Associated Press story out of Madison.

As a member of the AP, the Northwestern has the right to use AP copy, but this seems to me to be crossing the line. By putting a staff byline on the story, the paper is telling its readers that the story in all essential details is its own. That's not the case here.

(The Post-Crescent also carries the AP story, but has it marked as an AP story.)

Tagged at the end of the Northwestern's story is a note that the AP "contributed" to the article. That seems to me backwards. It's more like the Northwestern contributed additional material to the AP story.

Claiming credit for another reporter's lead is a far cry from borrowing a bit of boilerplate language, not that either practice is considered acceptable. Keep in mind that the lead is the part of the story that reporters typically spend the most time coming up with. It's often quite personal.

Something similar happened recently with a front-page story in The New York Times. The Times is planning an editor's note to set the record straight.

Perhaps we will see some clarification from the Northwestern. Or perhaps not.

Why does this matter?

Journalists believe, and history has unfortunately taught us, that cutting one corner will often encourage the cutting of subsequent and larger corners. Jayson Blair and Jack Kelly could both have been stopped before they did so much damage to the field of journalism if someone had stopped them from cutting corners when they first started doing so.

A campus story from last week, one that I didn't see in the Northwestern, bears this out. Last week the student newspaper had to admit that it had caught one of its reporters fabricating quotes and other information for a Page One story.

As the editor noted, in a prominently displayed apology, the fabrication was the sequel to an earlier case of plagiarism, which was allowed to go unremarked upon.

It's always good to try to nip these things in the bud.

Payback for Pub Crawl?

Today's Northwestern article makes me wonder who the anonymous complainers were about the alcohol served at Gallery Walk.

During last year's Pub Crawl controversy, more than one undergraduate pointed out to me the hypocrisy of local lights who were complaining about Pub Crawl while promoting other city events where the booze flows freely.

A figment of Wisconsin's imagination

Local chocolate shops were highlighted in a tasty article in yesterday's New York Times.

The article talks about the rivalry between Oaks and Hughes and begins with these observations:

Oaks Candy Corner in Oshkosh is a chocolate mirage.

Its gingerbread exterior yields to an interior that in winter is as sugary warm as the inside of a circus peanut and in summer is as refreshing as a wax Coke bottle. It smells like caramel corn and cocoa butter rubbed into the floorboards with a pair of Red Wing boots. It’s the shop just around the corner in an unremittingly blue-collar part of an unremittingly blue-collar town. It shouldn’t still be there, but there it is.

If Oaks Candy is a mirage, then the Hughes Homaid Chocolate Shop, less than half a mile away, is a figment of Wisconsin’s imagination. An 80-year-old bungalow two blocks from Lake Winnebago, it has only a small neon sign to state its trade and a full-blown candy-making operation in its basement.