Not so spectacular, you say?

Well, please remember that this is the Washington Times, where information is like a lollipop to a 4-year-old. That is, it absolutely cannot be shared.

Example: I reached Jeff Birnbaum today in the hope of interviewing him about his switch from management to columnist. I just wanted to know what was up, what he'd be doing in his new role. No dice. He wouldn't say a thing beyond the boilerplate statement he'd issued about being honored and privileged to have worked with so many good and talented people. He utterly refused to go beyond the statement in any shape or form. That's what the Washington Times does to you.

Maureen had us correct the column online as soon as the error was brought to her attention, adding in the sourcing to Marshall's blog. We ran a correction in today's paper,  referring readers to the correct version online.

There is no need to do anything further since there is no allegation, hint or anything else from Marshall that this was anything but an error. It was corrected. Journalists often use feeds from other staff journalists, free-lancers, stringers, a whole range of people. And from friends. Anyone with even the most passing acquaintance with Maureen's work knows that she is happy and eager to give people credit.

This is complete bullshit: Dowd. Fucking. Plagiarized. But she's a Pulitzer winner, a media elite, and a total babe, so the NYT is looking the other way. (I bet Jayson Blair is seething right now! Rick Bragg–not so much.)

Calderone closes his piece with this bit of insight:

If I was e-mailed a 40-plus-word block of text for this blog, and I used it, I'd include some sort of attribution — whether "a reader writes in," "media insider points out" or whatever the case may be.

But from The Times' response, it seems the paper finds it acceptable for columnists to take entire paragraphs from friends (or sources?), over the phone or e-mail, and reproduce them verbatim in the paper under the columnist's byline.

Awesome, Calderone, you'd do differently. So would I. So would my colleagues and our freelancers and every other journalist who actually had to pay the consequences of handing in illegitimate copy. Now, can somebody suggest a good punishment for Dowd, a well-paid, respected columnist at a world-famous institution, who has demonstrated that she's too lazy to rework a friend's idea into her own words?

Perhaps a 500-word definition essay on integrity? Or maybe the same thing should happen to her that would happen to a first-year NYT reporter who stole from another journalist...

Eric Zorn says what I can't.