Churnalism was built by the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that aims to make government more transparent and accountable, and Media Standards Trust, a U.K.-based nonprofit that advocates for transparency in news. The organizations previously created a U.K. version of Churnalism that compares web content to articles from the U.K. national press and the BBC.

“Here at Sunlight, we’re increasingly interested in tracking not just the flow of money in politics, but the flow of ideas, whether in legislation or floor speeches or news articles,” Sunlight Labs director Tom Lee said in a statement. “When we learned of what Media Standards Trust developed, it seemed natural for us to help them bring it to the U.S. news consumer.”

Churnalism U.S. is available as a web extension for Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers, or users can simply paste a URL into a website. The service then highlights possible similarities between the article and source material from Wikipedia and press releases. On its blog, Churnalism explains a little more about how the technology works to detect plagiarism. The database of press releases includes PRNewsWire, PR NewsWeb, MarketWire, EurekaAlert, Congressional Leadership and press releases from the White House, trade organizations, Fortune 500 companies and nonprofit research institutes and think tanks.

Because Churnalism U.S. is only searching Wikipedia and press releases, it doesn’t detect “classic” forms of plagiarism — an author copying another author’s original content from somewhere else on the web or in a printed work. Churnalism doesn’t pick up (yes, I checked) Atlantic writer Nate Thayer’s failure to credit his sources, for example, or Jonah Lehrer’s self-borrowing. For that, you’ll have to use a paid tool like Turn It In. But Churnalism plans to open up its API soon so that users can add more sources.

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Last month, the blog Newsbusters discovered that a large chunk of a piece that Zakaria wrote for Time magazine about gun control was almost identical to sections from a New Yorker piece on the same topic, written by Jill Lepore. Zakaria was subsequently suspended by both Time and CNN (although he has recently been reinstated after both entities said they found no evidence of further plagiarism). Lehrer, meanwhile — a high-profile author — was fired by resigned from the New Yorker after it was discovered that he had duplicated information from a number of sources.

Plagiarism is just inefficient hyperlinking

One of the themes that has been brought up repeatedly in stories about both Zakaria and Lehrer is the idea that they have been overworked as a result of media multi-tasking. Stories about the Lehrer incident, for example, note that he was writing books and had a packed public-speaking schedule while also trying to write a blog for the New Yorker, and Zakaria made the same link by saying he plans to cut down on his responsibilities — implying that this was to blame for him mixing up his notes from the New Yorker piece with his own writing (he also said he recently hired an assistant).

But I think Box.net CEO Aaron Levie put his finger on a big part of the problem in a tweet he posted recently, in which he said plagiarism “is just really inefficient hyperlinking.”

Plagiarism is just really inefficient hyperlinking.

—
Aaron Levie (@levie) August 10, 2012

Although he probably just intended to be witty, I think Levie makes a good point. Plagiarism is defined as the attempt to “steal and pass off the ideas or words of another as one’s own,” and it is the last part of that definition that is the most important one. It isn’t so much that a writer like Lehrer or Zakaria takes information from someone else and uses it in a column — plenty of writers do that, and as the media world has exploded thanks to social tools such as blogs and Twitter, this phenomenon has only become more commonplace. But neither of them gave credit to the source of the content they used, and that was the real crime.

This is exactly the same kind of argument that gets made about news aggregators or blogs that do a poor job of crediting the source of the content they are aggregating. As Jeff Jarvis has argued in a series of recent posts, since copying is rampant on the internet, we should be more focused on ways of giving credit to the source or creator of that content. And what better way to give credit than by linking prominently to its originator? This is just another reason why links are the lifeblood of the internet, as I argued in a recent post about the back-and-forth between bloggers and the traditional media over the latter never giving credit to the former.

Linking also provides a great defence

If either Zakaria or Lehrer had been more devoted to the idea of linking to sources, they might have spent more time making note of where the information they were using came from, so that they could include a link — in the same way that academics routinely cite footnotes to back up their claims. Would they still have tried to pass those sections off as their own? Perhaps. As my paidContent colleague Laura Owen has noted about Lehrer, some of his behavior was likely a result of the pressure to be a public intellectual. But if either one is sincere about how their plagiarism was an honest mistake, paying more attention to linking might help.

And if anyone needs evidence of how a consistent policy of linking to sources can be a positive thing, they should look no further than the Gawker case: the blog network was sued by a company for defamation, based on a piece that the tech blog Gizmodo wrote about its products. In a decision that acquitted the media company of this charge, the court said that part of the rationale for its ruling came from the use of links in the Gizmodo piece, which provided ample evidence of what the post was referring to. As the court decision put it:

“Having ready access to the same facts as the authors, readers were put in a position to draw their own conclusions about Redmond and his ventures and technologies… Statements are generally considered to be nonactionable opinion when the facts supporting the opinion are disclosed.”

David Weinberger, co-author of the seminal book The Cluetrain Manifesto and a fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society, argued in a post about the journalistic principle of objectivity that “Objectivity is a trust mechanism you rely on when your medium can’t do links.” In other words, when you have the ability to link to information that supports your conclusions, it’s easier to get away with being subjective, because readers are able to follow the links and decide for themselves whether you are credible.

I think the same principle applies to plagiarism: it is something that occurs when a medium doesn’t allow — or at least doesn’t encourage — links to original sources. The internet may make it more likely that someone copies content from another, but it also makes it easier to fix.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user skedonk

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Earlier this week, Tablet magazine’s Michael Moynihan reported that Lehrer had fabricated Bob Dylan quotes in the bestselling Imagine. It had previously been discovered that Lehrer was reusing his own material in New Yorker blog posts. Lehrer resigned from his position as a staff writer at the New Yorker. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has stopped shipping physical copies of Imagine and the ebook is no longer for sale.

To the right is the ad that appeared this morning in Shelf Awareness, an email newsletter aimed at booksellers. (Note: The image may not appear in this post if your ad blocker is on.) Publishers Marketplace reporter Sarah Weinman pointed out the ad on Twitter.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt had no comment on whether it is running the ads elsewhere.

Updated 8/6/12: HMH is also offering refunds to readers who purchased a print copy of the book, but notes ”consumers must submit requests to the retailer from which the e-book was originally purchased.” Here’s how to do that:

Amazon Kindle: Contact customer service if you are outside the normal 7-day window for ebook returns.

Barnes & Noble Nook: Call 1-800-The-BOOK or visit in-store customer service.

Kobo: Contact Kobo customer service.

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New York Times book publishing reporter Julie Bosman first reported Lehrer’s resignation on Twitter.

Lehrer’s publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, is “exploring all options available to us,” HMH spokeswoman Lori Glazer said in a statement. “We are taking the ebook of Imagine off-sale, and halting shipment of physical copies.” (For now, though, the book is still available on Amazon.)

Houghton Mifflin also provided a statement from Lehrer:

Three weeks ago, I received an email from journalist Michael Moynihan asking about Bob Dylan quotes in my book Imagine. The quotes in question either did not exist, were unintentional misquotations, or represented improper combinations of previously existing quotes. But I told Mr. Moynihan  that they were from archival interview footage provided to me by Dylan’s representatives. This was a lie spoken in a moment of panic. When Mr. Moynihan followed up, I continued to lie, and say things I should not have said.

The lies are over now. I understand the gravity of my position. I want to apologize to everyone I have let down, especially my editors and readers. I also owe a sincere apology to Mr. Moynihan. I will do my best to correct the record and ensure that my misquotations and mistakes are fixed.

I have resigned my position as staff writer at The New Yorker.

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In a post entitled “How I got a big advance from a big publisher and got self-published anyway,” Trunk wrote:

So I sold my book to a mainstream publisher and they sucked. I am going to go into extreme detail about how much they sucked, so I’m not going to tell you the name of the publisher because I got a lot of money from them. I’m just going to tell you that the mainstream publisher is huge, and if you have any respect left for print publishing, you respect this publisher. But you will not at the end of this post.

She went on to detail the problems with traditional book publishing. Ultimately, though she had received her full advance, she decided to pull her book from the publisher and self-publish instead. (She won’t name the publisher, but it looks as though it was Pearson computer and technology imprint, Que.) She worked with Hyperink, a digital publisher that works directly with “domain experts” — including high-profile bloggers like MG Siegler and Forbes exec Lewis DVorkin — to publish their ebooks.

Trunk founded Brazen Careerist, a startup focused on Generation Y in the workplace. (She was born Adrienne Roston and changed her name.) On her popular personal blog, she covers career-related topics, Asperger’s, parenting, homeschooling and women’s issues. (If you’re not familiar with the blog, check out posts like “5 time management tricks I learned from 5 years of hating Tim Ferriss,” “What it’s like to have sex with someone with Asperger’s” and “The hardest part of my job is that everyone lies about parenting.”) Her book publishing post is written in the same tone as many other posts on the site — blunt and opinionated.

The post caused a stir in the publishing community last week. Many people wondered if she really got her entire advance and then bailed, and questioned whether  traditional publishers’ marketing efforts are as bad as she makes them out to be. (Digital Book World ran a post entitled “I don’t buy Penelope Trunk’s story.” TechCrunch took a different angle: “Penelope Trunk calls bullshit on traditional publishing, publishes her book exclusively on Hyperink.” That headline isn’t accurate since the book is available through many digital bookstores, not just Hyperink’s website.)

This week, I talked with Trunk on the phone. She was surprised by the reaction to her book publishing post, especially since the topic seems less controversial than other topics that she’s covered.

“I see that it would be surprising that someone would rip their publisher to shreds,” she said, but the argument for self-publishing seems obvious to her.  Of course, she noted, “not a lot of authors are in the position that I’m in” — with a very large online following — so while her argument might not be news to other authors, “it’s really hard to find someone who can say it without ruining their ability to ever get published again.”

I told her about the community of outspoken self-publishing advocates like J.A. Konrath, who blogs almost exclusively about self-publishing and often riles up the publishing community with his opinionated posts. Trunk hadn’t read those posts and doesn’t see herself as part of that community. “I don’t want to be one of those self-publishing gurus,” she said.

“When’s the last time you heard about a publisher going after someone in court?”

“What really blows my mind is people talking about how I’m making stuff up,” Trunk said. “It’s like fiddling while Rome burns.” She was referring specifically to her statement that she received her entire advance from the traditional publisher, then pulled out of the agreement. She confirmed to me that she did get the entire advance (not just a portion of it). “I’m lucky I did. That was really fun for me,” she said. “But that’s not germane to [the rest of her argument].” Still, she noted, “When’s the last time you heard about a publisher going after someone in court?”

Traditional publishers’ business model is risky, Trunk says. “Their revenue model assumes that authors are going to flake. [The publisher] is relying heavily on [the author] to promote the book. They’ve got no stick. They’re all carrots.” You can take the advance and not promote your book at all, she noted.

I asked Trunk why she decided to publish her book traditionally in the first place. (She also traditionally published her 2007 Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success.) “I ran numbers,” she said. “I thought that, if I do no work, the advance that I get is probably commensurate to what I could sell on my own — but it would be a lot less work. But what I really thought was that I would learn a lot because I know that I’m going to have to be an ace at the publishing industry and I thought when you’re publishing a book, you’re partners with the publisher. It would be a little publishing MBA for me. The person who acquired my book knew that.”

“If you have a big blog, there’s no reason to write all new stuff for a book”

Trunk told me the traditional publisher was “obsessed with word count and with what percentage of the book was new.” Her book is “mostly off [her] blog,” she says, and that’s intentional: “The most proven model for book publishing right now is to get an audience online with the exact posts you’re going to put in a book, and then tie those posts into a very cohesive, bigger idea.” So, she says, that’s what she did.

“Anything that’s not that model  is much more high-risk,” she said. I asked her to explain why. “I already have run the ideas as blog posts,” she said, “so if there are 10 blog posts that get 1,000 comments each, then you know the book is interesting. You know that people want to read the book. If I haven’t tested any of the ideas online, I have no idea if people even like to read it.”

It’s not surprising that traditional publishers don’t agree, she said. “Their P&Ls can’t support it. They have a whole support staff that doesn’t fit into that model.” But Trunk thinks it’s risky when traditional publishers sign up nonfiction authors who don’t have blogs and therefore haven’t tested their ideas on an audience already. “Why not, if their ideas are going to be so popular?” she said.

Small ideas are for the Web, big ideas are for books

“All small ideas get put on the Web,” she said. “There’s no reason to hold a small idea [for a book]. Your book has to add up to an idea that would be too hard to express in a blog or in a series of Web posts. That’s really what an editor’s eye should be for.”

The discussion of repurposed content made me think of Jonah Lehrer, who was recently discovered repurposing previously published content for New Yorker blog posts. “Who cares?” she said. “If you love Jonah Lehrer, you’re on top of things and you’re not reading him [for the first time] in the New Yorker. Jonah Lehrer’s doing great, so anybody who’s going to criticize him for not being the right kind of journalist is a joke.”

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“It was a stupid thing to do and incredibly lazy and absolutely wrong,” he said.

Today blogger Edward Champion of Reluctant Habits found that Lehrer had also recycled his own previous material for use in his bestselling book “Imagine.” Lehrer’s publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, said in a statement:

Lehrer fully acknowledges that ‘Imagine’ draws upon work he has published in shorter form during the past several years and is sorry that was not made clear. He owns the rights to the relevant articles, so no permission was needed. He will add language to the acknowledgments noting his prior work.

Lehrer’s editor at the New Yorker, Nicholas Thompson, told Jacob Silverman at the Daily Beast, “He understands he made a serious mistake. He understands the rules. It’s definitely not going to happen again.”

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Lehrer shouldn’t be excused for cribbing from himself. But it’s not that surprising that it happened.

“Big ideas” aren’t unlimited

Jonah Lehrer, in the model of fellow New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell, is a “big ideas” writer. He writes books that center around a counterintuitive or provocative theme, and explains why things are not as they seem. Books like these are often really popular.

So far, the criticism toward Lehrer has centered around the fact that he copied his own sentences, but copying ideas and themes is also problematic. There is not unlimited material for this kind of pop science writing. It varies in quality, a lot. Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” was better than his later books like “Outliers,” partly because the idea behind “The Tipping Point” was better and the examples were fresher. (Similarly, when Malcolm Gladwell tried to apply the counterintuitive thing to protests in Egypt and Tunisia, people got mad.)

It is tough to come up with new, fresh material that advances a counterintuitive thesis. It’s even tougher to repeatedly come up with those new “wow, I never looked at it that way” ideas. And when you do come up with those ideas, it’s probably more tempting to recycle them.

Writing isn’t public speaking

Authors like Lehrer and Gladwell do a lot of public speaking along with writing gigs. (Here are some of Lehrer’s public appearances.) In public speaking, borrowing from yourself isn’t such a bad thing. Many public speakers recycle material from one presentation to the next. Presumably, they tailor that material depending on whom they’re speaking to, and don’t give the same presentation to the same group twice. (Slate’s Josh Levin points to Malcolm Gladwell’s disclosure about how he handles his obligations to the New Yorker versus his obligations as a public speaker.)

Lehrer’s self-borrowing is easy to discover because he has written for a lot of high-profile publications — Wired, the New Yorker, the New York Times — that attract similar audiences. The examples discovered so far are vivid and memorable — the logic puzzles, the “love making.” That could mean that there is a lot more similar content waiting to be discovered, but it’s clear that Lehrer tends to repeat similar memorable themes. That’s not so bad in his role as a public speaker, but it’s problematic for a journalist.

Lehrer recently did a video interview with GigaOM’s Chris Albrecht. It’s below.

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Author Jonah Lehrer‘s new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works, is all about — as the name says — being creative. Lehrer chatted with us specifically about creativity and entrepreneurship and how today’s CEOs can release their inner insightful genius.

In the video, Lehrer explains how entrepreneurs can:

• Unlock those a-ha! epiphanies
• Stay creative through your entire career
• Build a creative workforce

Check it out and then chime in with your own thoughts about generating creativity in the comments.

BONUS! Lehrer puts your creative chops to the test with a classic insight puzzle. Can you solve it?

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