Growing up, I was into making fanzines. Being a zinester taught me many valuable lessons but plagiarism wasn’t one of them because it was a given that you just didn’t do it. Plus owning a cool, compact voice recorder was something we strived for. Even as I began to write for “real” magazines, it never occurred to me to actually take another person’s work and pass it on as my own (besides having the luxury of a company fact checker was pretty rad). But one of the main facts about writing is that it’s hard and this is why most plagiarize. And despite that it is true I cried while watching the 2003 movie Shattered Glass – thinking about plagiarism today – it’s not about truth or integrity (two of the most important ingredients in writing); it’s about how many Instagram followers you have, which in return = revenue. So with the article in Vulture by Megh Wright on the Jerry Media founder’s penchant for plagiarism helps put a very small spot light on this very large epidemic.
