The Miami Herald’s Joan Fleischman writes:
Teaching ethics at Barry University: Octavio Roca, former Herald arts and culture writer. Roca, 56, left The Herald last year — amid allegations of “self-plagiarism”… [snip]
Herald executive editor Tom Fiedler mentioned Roca’s departure in a July 4, 2004, column on newsroom ethics.
Roca “produced several articles for The Herald that had been copied substantially from those he had written for newspapers where he previously worked,” Fiedler wrote. ”When confronted, he sought to justify his recycling by likening himself to a college professor who delivers the same lecture to different students. And he argued that, because he was repeating his own words, he hadn’t committed plagiarism, which is the theft of another’s work.” But, Fiedler wrote, “that rationale stood reason upside down.”
If self-plagiarism is such a big deal, how come nobody made a stir when TimesWatch’s Clay Waters caught Bob Herbert last month recycling a column from 1999? (via Romenesko)