RADIOWRITERWARS: Jimmy Kempski Accuses CBS Philly Writer of Plagiarism, on WIP
Jimmy Kempski went on the Mike and Ike Show [editor’s note: Pretty sure Barkann worked 20 out of 24 hours yesterday] on WIP to come at Andrew Porter of CBS Philly for plagiarism claims on Tuesday. More specifically, Kempski alleges Porter copied and pasted his transcript of a Bart Scott radio appearance without credit (something he previously accused NJ.com of). Here is their Twitter back-and-forth, because we can’t find audio of their exchange on WIP [UPDATE: now have audio]:
.@MikeandIke94WIP Call me. Let's do this.
— Jimmy Kempski (@JimmyKempski) October 20, 2015
.@And_Porter Do your own work, clown.
— Jimmy Kempski (@JimmyKempski) October 20, 2015
@And_Porter Just don't copy and paste my stuff and we're good.
— Jimmy Kempski (@JimmyKempski) October 20, 2015
@JimmyKempski I copied and pasted your stuff?
— Andrew Porter (@And_Porter) October 20, 2015
@And_Porter https://t.co/0MekDBYgHi
— Jimmy Kempski (@JimmyKempski) October 20, 2015
@JimmyKempski hahahah. Are you kidding? It's a quote from a VIRAL audio clip that literally anyone can transcribe and publish using QUOTES.
— Andrew Porter (@And_Porter) October 20, 2015
@JimmyKempski HAHAH! You are upset about that???? I will add a link to you now if you insist? You're a joke bro. What a baby.
— Andrew Porter (@And_Porter) October 20, 2015
@And_Porter Do you have no idea that plagiarism is about as unethical as it gets in this profession?
— Jimmy Kempski (@JimmyKempski) October 20, 2015
@JimmyKempski dude, I transcribed a viral audio clip. Every NFL blog/website had those quotes. I really can't comprehend this.
— Andrew Porter (@And_Porter) October 20, 2015
@JimmyKempski wonder if anyone else will post the same quotes as you from the Chip Kelly presser. Make sure to call plagiarism,
— Andrew Porter (@And_Porter) October 20, 2015
Somebody named "Mike" just schooled me on the ethics of journalism, via email. pic.twitter.com/FZBUdDDNvy
— Jimmy Kempski (@JimmyKempski) October 20, 2015
The WIP exchange:
[Kempski mentioned on Twitter how low his mic level was. We’ve seen this tactic from WIP before.]
Here’s the transcription– credit to my own ears and tired, tired fingers:
Jimmy Kempski: I don’t really have any interest in this nonsense but …
Andrew Porter: Neither do I.
JK: Andrews absolutely plagiarized an article I wrote. Bart Scott was on WFAN, your affiliate, in New York ..
AP: Our station.
JK: Correct. Bart Scott says a bunch of things about Chip Kelly and whatever else. That audio did not exist anywhere online. I called the station, had their producer send me the audio clip, transcribed it, posted it …
AP: That’s false.
JK: And then from there on …
AP: You think I can’t do the same though?
JK: Clowns just come out of the woodwork and they copy and paste it.
AP: What are you talking about?
JK: What Andrew doesn’t mention here? I had a grammatical error in my article. He copied and pasted the grammatical error. Do your own work, Andrew.
AP: Okay, Jimmy, number one: WFAN is an affiliate of us, so the audio is online, it was a viral audio clip and it was online.
JK: It was eventually, but not when at the time when you copied and pasted my work.
AP: Maybe you had it first but when I wrote it, it was a viral story already. I was even late to the story. I run an entire sports site so I have to get …
JK: True or false, Andrew: Did you copy and paste the content from my company’s website?
AP: No. That’s false.
JK: So you had the exact same grammatical error that I did?
AP: Maybe that’s a coincidence, but I don’t …
JK: A coincidence? Andrew, you copied and pasted the same exact grammatical error.
AP: Dude, number one: I didn’t. Number two: Even if I did, it’s a quote.
JK: Clown. Hack.
AP: Yo, it’s a quote. It’s a quote from Bart Scott.
JK: I can’t believe that you are trying to defend copy and pasting is.
AP: What’s plagiarism? Do you know what plagiarism is?
Barkann: Wait, what’s the grammatical error?
AP: A quote! It’s a Bart Scott quote. It says “this guys” instead of “this guy,” there’s an extra ‘s’ on “this guy.”
JK: It said “this guys” … So Andrew made that exact same mistake as me? That’s what you’re saying happened, Andrew?
AP: I got send his quote from someone in here [<em>Ed. note: Porter previously said in the tweets above that he transcribed it himself.</em>] an intern.
JK: Okay, so somebody else plagiarized my work and you slapped it up on the internet.
AP: I don’t know, but it’s a quote from Bart Scott. So I’m putting it in quotes. I don’t care who transcribed it. It’s a quote. That’s not plagiarism dude, it’s a quote.
JK: It absolutely is.
AP: Are you an idiot? You’re a moron. You’re an absolute moron … When Chip Kelly speaks …
JK: Do your own work, clown.
AP: Can I ask you a question? When Chip Kelly speaks, and he has quotes, and the Eagles blasted his quotes across the entire media outlet – I get them, you get them, Mike gets them, everybody gets Chip Kelly’s quotes – can I copy and paste Chip’s quotes into a story, using quotes? Is that legal?
JK: If you get the quotes somewhere else online, and you’re basically copy and pasting it …
AP: THEY’RE QUOTES!
JK: You absolutely have an attribution to where you got it from.
AP: You sound like a complete baby.
I am no expert in journalistic ethics – I work for a man who once eavesdropped on Ruben Amaro for two-straight hours – but in situations like this, if you’re copying and pasting a transcription – which is what Kempski claims, since they both had the same uncommon typo – it’s polite to credit the person who did the transcribing. It’s arduous work that no one really likes (ahem), so a little hat tip is, at the very least, common. Again, if you transcribe something yourself, that’s not necessary. But Kempski is alleging Porter didn’t, and I’m not sure I know a writer who would pass up copying and crediting to instead listen and transcribe the audio themselves. There’s really no point, if you reasonably trust the transcription skills of the person who did the work first. Again, a credit there is necessary. And if you have the same typo in the same spot, it screams copy/paste. Beat writers share transcribing duties all the time, too.
Kempski and some others (Ryan Lawrence included) have levied plagiarism claims against NJ.com on Twitter in the past, and those often (but not always) also dealt with copied transcripts. In fact – and I’m not saying Kempski did this – dropping a typo in a transcript or post on purpose if you suspect plagiarism (or laziness) is a good way to sniff it out. A simple, harmless, oddly-placed typo or grammatical error will do.
In the click-based economy of web writing – where links going back to your piece, depending on where you work, can be huge – it benefits a writer to be the source of a story, so they can be linked back from anywhere that picks it up. For example, we wrote about the Sixers/Wells Fargo spat a little over a week ago. A couple of days later, someone else noticed it, and for whatever reason, it took off then rather than when our piece went up. I don’t think we were copied, but all of a sudden the story was on SI, ESPN, Yahoo Sports, and everywhere else. If a site is smaller or a writer has a click-based incentive built into their pay, that’s huge if they miss out on the original credit.
Kyle: Jim doesn’t have a click-based incentive built into his pay, but it seems he’s campaigning for one. Fine by me– blog commission. But as someone who has worn out a path between the ⌘ and C and ⌘ and V keys on his keyboard (fun fact: I actually had to copy that little symbol to do that, so we’re getting real meta here), I feel uniquely qualified to weigh-in on this almost entirely useless spat. What we typically do, for transcriptions of quotes, is either mention the site that transcribed or obtained them, or link to the site in the preceding paragraph, and then block quote it or otherwise call it out. In CB speak, this makes it apparent that this is something from somewhere else. When you’re using something that is another writer’s own words and not just his or her transcription of a quote, then it makes sense to mention specifically the outlet or writer you’re quoting. I don’t have a dog in this fight – I’m cordial with both Kempski and Porter – and I don’t blame either side here. If I’m Porter, I would’ve copied the transcription (and at least linked to it), and if I’m Kempski, I’d be pissed that it wasn’t linked to or credited. This shit happens all the time, though. Another example: That video of Bradley Cooper and Jeffrey Lurie singing Fly Eagles Fly was sent to my wife by her good friend the other night. I tweeted it from our separate video and GIFs Twitter account, which has only like 100 followers, just so I could embed it on the site. The Tweet, unless you’re one of the 100 or so people who follow that account, had to be seen on this site. By the end of day yesterday, the video was on TMZ, NJ.com, Barstool, Terez Owens, and probably elsewhere– not one of those sites mentioned CB. They just embedded the original Tweet (which they almost certainly spotted here), and in TMZ’s case, ripped the whole video, cropped it, put it in their own player, and credited Twitter as a whole:
For what it’s worth, our friend’s mother-in-law, who took the video, is tickled that it went viral. Me? I’m a little pissed that no one bothered to mention where it came from. Because I do work on page views.
UPDATE: After this post – without me asking – TMZ actually updated that: