Category Archives: Miscellany

To Catch A Plagiarist

By Michael Becker | Published: February 20, 2010
Journalists often talk and write about how bad it is, which makes me won­der why we find it accept­able to do almost noth­ing to pre­vent it? The gen­eral atti­tude towards pla­gia­rism check­ing seems to be, “Let’s save our money and let read­ers and other peo­ple catch the culprits.” via cjr.org This comes from Craig Silverman at the [...]
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School Sued For Spying On Students With Laptop Cameras Says It Was A Security Feature, Turns It Off

By Michael Becker | Published: February 19, 2010
The Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania was recently sued after allegedly spy­ing on a stu­dent using a school-owned lap­top via the laptop’s built-in Web cam. In this note to par­ents, sent Thursday night, which we obtained, the school says it was a secu­rity fea­ture, and that it was only used “for the nar­row pur­pose of locat­ing [...]
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Atlanta Progressive News fires reporter for trying to be objective

By Michael Becker | Published: February 16, 2010
At a very fun­da­men­tal, core level, Springston did not share our vision for a news pub­li­ca­tion with a pro­gres­sive per­spec­tive. He held on to the notion that there was an objec­tive real­ity that could be reported objec­tively, despite the fact that that was not our edi­to­r­ial pol­icy at Atlanta Progressive News. It just [...]
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A third as prolific as Twitter seems to think

By Michael Becker | Published: February 7, 2010
In case you were check­ing up on me, my Twitter account is one of many affected by a bug that some­how mul­ti­plied our tweet counts by a fac­tor of roughly three. I have not tweeted more than 11,300 times, but if you want to think of me as being that pro­lific, be my guest.
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Send a poor man some drivel

By Michael Becker | Published: February 6, 2010
I used to have a hobby. I would pick up local alter­na­tive news­pa­pers, get out my red pen and copy edit their sto­ries, right there on the page. It was fun, and it kept me sharp. Sadly, the hobby has started to drag on me lately. Often, I can’t fin­ish edit­ing a sin­gle arti­cle, let alone [...]
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