A professional journalist plagiarising. Really?!

(Published on the Runcorn and Widnes Weekly News website)

Going on placement as a trainee you're never sure if your work is going to be up to scratch, it's hard to know what the publication is expecting from you. I suppose it is a compliment rather than an insult that Mark Smith has published my article under his byline but doesn't help my feeling that what he has done is fundamentally wrong.


Click here to see the article I wrote the day before for the Liverpool Echo.


As you can see the article above is identical, except for the fact it has the word Widnes instead of Merseyside (which is in fact false as the band are from Runcorn and West Derby too, only of the band members is from Widnes).


I understand the newspapers are all part of the Trinity Mirror group and therefore have access to each others articles. However when I went for a work placement with the Echo last summer, as a student journalist, I certainly did not expect what was a page three lead to be lifted and attributed to somebody else.


Plagiarising is a risky thing to do at any point in your life, but when you are a professional journalist it's just down right idiotic.


I've emailed two editors at R&W Weekly News to no avail... I'd like some advice from any journalist that has faced this problem before.