The story of why a now ex-New York Times business reporter succumbed to plagiarism goes beyond “accidental plagiarism,” as Zachery Kouwe, a 31-year-old business reporter that writes The Times’ Deal Book called it. The public counts on a professional journalist to know better than to lift somebody else’s words and use them as his/her own, more so when it comes from a reporter of the venerable and trusted New York Times.

Anyway, as we all know from the media’s outrage, Kouwe read the signs really well and “resigned” just before he got shown the “door.”

Kouwe’s quite public exit from the Times, certainly rang a warning bell, not only to journalists but to casual bloggers as well, to take note that the driving need to fill uncountable blogs with millions of words, has created a culture of acceptable re-purposing, re-hashing and re-telling of the news from every which angle, in other words, a culture where ‘accidental plagiarism’ can easily happen.

The incident has certainly caused a moment of reflection, forcing a re-evaluation of what is being said, and in whose words it is being said, and for what purpose. I bet every blogger will go back and do some checking…

But what is not acceptable is Kouwe’s comment in an interview with The Observer in reference to the accusation that he had plagiarized in which he said, “I was in complete shock,” and “I was as surprised as anyone that this was occurring.” His lame excuse — that he writes approximately 7,000 words every week for the blog and for the paper and that given the mounds of reporting he does, something is bound to fall through the cracks as he peruses press releases, earnings reports and court documents for his reporting. Which goes directly to my point of the desperate need to fill blogs with whatever…

Here is the funniest mea culpa I have ever heard. A professional journalist that can actually say, “I thought it was my own stuff,” and “it somehow slipped in there.”

Somehow? I think that most journalists know better than Mr. Kouwe that a cut and paste job is never acceptable. But I would advise bloggers who are not held to the same high standards of journalists, that they better slow down, think more as to what to write and maybe choose to write less — and stick to their own words.

Photo by Getty Images.

As it turns out, George Orwell’s science fiction book titled “1984” was not quite on target, as we look back 25 years later. Its futuristic predictions had a “Big Brother” watching, literally on screens everywhere, our every move in a totalitarian society that would dictate how we were allowed to live, what we could read, watch and do — basically turning us into a will-less robotic society.  Happily that’s not what happened, for unlike the Orwellian futuristic story, nobody is watching.

However, ‘They,’ whether Big Brother or other, are taking “copious notes…”

It’s well understood that a mountain of information is known about our offline lives like income, credit score, home ownership, what car we drive, etc.  It’s also well known that our every move online is traceable, through a technology known as computer “cookies” (a small text file which contains a unique ID tag, placed on your computer by a website). But now comes the news, as reported by Stefani Clifford on the front page of the New York Times, July 31, headlined “Ads Follow Web Users and get Deeply Personal,” that technology has made possible fatter and better “cookies” – ones that connect our offline information to consumers’ browsers.

Just think of a delicious wafer cookie, with a layer of cream in between two wafers.  Now add an extra layer of cream (your hereto private information or real world data) and bingo! — marketers and advertisers start salivating. In this case not at the taste, but at the opportunity to now take out the guesswork involved in online-only profiling. They can use this trove of information to show different products to people with different shopping habits, in many formats, i.e., ads, e-mail messages or semi-personalized Web pages.  Retailers that are already taking advantage of this tactic include Gap and Victoria’s Secret.

According to the article, this melding of offline information with online tracking will result in “a sea change in the way consumers encounter the Web.”

Although consumers can delete those “cookies” from their computers that allow such tracking, not many do and, according to the article, “it is easy for companies to add cookies without users noticing.”

This has an Orwellian feel to it, knowing that a lot of this is done invisibly.

In the book“1984”, it was the totalitarian government that intruded in the lives of private citizens.  It would seem that Corporate America is doing likewise, for nobody gave anyone permission to use the offline information to further typecast us as to our wants, dislikes and behavioral patterns.

To be fair, I suppose that there are benefits to this all around, not just for advertisers, marketers and companies showcasing products.  Even some consumers will be pleased to have their “wants” “come to them” based on their online profile, rather than go hunting themselves.

But what — are we going to make George Orwell right in becoming a will less society in which others do the choosing for us, those who now know what we think and want?  Do we want to be so predictable?  What about randomness? What about individuality?

In recent times there has been much discussion about online privacy issues.  I say this raises the bar on privacy concerns all around…

It seems it was all done backwards…. First came the innovation, then the run-away successes and then – oh dear, how do we get paid?  Take the freebie online publication dilemma. Who thought that one up?  Now comes all the chest beating, albeit a bit late, in light of the need to make money – or as we used to say, manage a sustainable business.

Look, hindsight doesn’t work.  You don’t get to charge once ‘you’ve given away the store.’

Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of News Corp. is mumbling about the need to end a “malfunctioning” business, per Eric Pfanner’s article in the International Herald Tribune of May 18.  According to the article, other publishers including The Guardian Media Group in Britain and the New York Times Company said they were examining ways to get readers to pay for digital news.

Even the ever-growing and popular two-year old Twitter is getting concerned about getting paid.  It wants to steer clear of advertising, per company cofounder Biz Stone in an article on CIO.com, on May 19, 2009, but needs to consider options.  Apparently, the company is developing tools and services that it may offer on top of Twitter’s free microblogging service.  According to a videotaped interview at a recent Reuters event, Stone offered, “I think by the end of the year we’ll have something out there.  It doesn’t have to be this super home run in terms of making billions of dollars. … But it has to show a little bit of signs of life, telling folks, ‘Yes Twitter can be a sustainable business.”

Let’s hope…

Lawmakers in France have come up with a whopper (pardon Burger King) of a plan to fight against unauthorized sharing of digital music and movies, in the hopes of having consumers pay for such services.  The approved law simply threatens such pirates with the loss of Internet access.  Good luck…

There seems to be an answer amidst all this brouhaha, and the example can be taken from the music industry.  It’s about packaging, that is, not charging for what the customer expects to get free, but offer add-on services as a package — and then charge.  Example: unlimited music, packaged with broadband subscriptions or other purchases.

But just think — it would not be a bad business model if digital news were to be packaged in a similar way, with legitimate offerings consumers actually want.  Basically, sell something other than basic services, which can then remain free.  Clearly there some other attempts at getting paid for receiving the news electronically, such as subscriptions to Amazon’s Kindle DX tablet and the soon-to-come Reader from the New York Times.

One expects business paradigms to change, but in the end, business has, and always will be, about getting paid for services or products.

I think that the original allure of the Internet, with its infinite possibilities, had us all jumping into the water but, apparently, not with feet first…

In Camelot, it was the knight in shining armor that saved the princess, locked away in the tower.

With yesterday’s unveiling of Amazon’s Kindle DX, a new multi-purpose version of its digital eBook reader, the beleaguered newspaper industry may very well have its “own knight in shining armor” as quoted from a pre-launch article by Brad Stone in the International Herald Tribune (IHN) and The New York Times on May 5.  According to Stone’s report, Amazon is first in line to potentially save newspapers as in “throwing an electronic life preserver to old-media companies.”

Maybe…

As opposed to the launch of Kindle 1 last February (labeled as ‘experimental’ by the firm), which had skeptics wondering about large-scaled adoption of the device, the Kindle DX was launched with a “safety net” so to speak.  Even before yesterday’s announcement, several high-circulation newspapers including The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post had planned pilots with Kindle DX for this coming summer, where they would offer the device at a reduced price to readers who live in areas where home-delivery is not available, and who sign up for a long-term subscription to the Kindle edition of the newspapers.

But I don’t get it.  How do you continue to convince people to pay for subscriptions when most publications have their material freely available on the Web?

Reality is, freely available or not, many of us still pay for subscriptions today, anyway.  Print publications have always offered something tangible and comfortable — as in holding a newspaper or magazine in our hands with our morning coffee, or sharing an article with a fellow commuter, or simply enjoying the rustling sound of turning pages, folding down corners to mark a page, etc.

Old habits die-hard.  Time will tell whether consumers will migrate to reading from tablet-like devices or not, and how quickly…

However, for newspapers, the potential for huge cost savings from the discontinuation of printing and distribution alone, may be just the “second chance” that they need.  Several similarly-positioned devices are due to hit the market in the next 12-months, with other offerings reported to be in the works by the likes of News Corp., the magazine publisher Hearst, and upstart Plastic Logic.

The concept becomes very attractive when you hear Amazon’s Chief Executive Jeff Bezos’ comment, “With the Kindle DX, you get to carry all your documents and your whole library in one slender package.”

How convenient and efficient.  These, may just be the drivers for consumer adoption…

I love the NY Times.  It has been my “journalistic” bible since my first days as a PR professional.  Moreover, I peruse the Opinion page even before I finish the front page.  And that is why I was so disappointed with Nicholas Kristof’s column in the NY Times on Sunday January 18.

Traditionally there has been a line written in stone between journalism and advertising – a heavy black line.  However, in the last decade, that line took on shades of gray when smaller publications offered editorial content, when advertising dollars were spent.  And then, of course, came the advertorial, which is an ad disguised as an editorial.

But I did not expect a venerable columnist such as Kristof to muddle the PR/Advertising waters.

In his column he wrote about a contest that he “concocted” that takes the winning university student with him on a reporting trip to Africa.  The reason for the trip is commendable, since he wanted to generate “activism for distant people whom we can’t visualize” and basically build outrage among young people for the likes of Dafur, Somalia, etc. through first hand experience.

But my take is that he used his column as a self-serving vehicle to advertise his contest, right down to what applicants can do and how.  The column speaks directly to potential applicants basically soliciting applications.  C’mon, that’s advertising.

I don’t profess to tell the NY Times how their much-respected columnists should write.  I also do not have a problem with informing readers about a courageous step taken to engage young people as to global issues. But I do have a problem with the way it was written.

As a PR professional I still believe that journalists, opinion writers or not, should adhere to that old rule of separating editorial facts and opinions from blatant self-serving solicitation which is best left to advertising.

Yes, it’s my first blog with many more musings and thoughts to come…

But for my first, I want to address the schism that exists worldwide, right now.  On one hand there has never been such a surge of world optimism and renewed hope in making the impossible, possible — ever.  An example was Bob Herbert’s Sunday column in the NY Times two weeks ago, which carried the headline “Americans, take a bow!”  And yes, we proudly can.  We have shattered a ceiling, if not all ceilings.

But on the other hand we have been sucked in by a world pessimism surrounding our financial systems that, if left unchecked – will sink us deeper and paralyze hope.

Pessimism begets pessimism.  It’s a black hole that can suck the air out of everything that is possible. I venture to say that we have a choice.

This situation can be compared to the vase in Somerset Maugham’s ravishing classic, The Razor’s Edge.  A plastic vase never breaks in a fall, but will never have the beauty of a crystal vase that will.  A great example of “on one hand or the other.”   We can select one over the other, as long as we are willing to take the “risk” or consequences.

It’s the inventive and creative mind that can find a way to keep the dark hole at bay.  And no one will argue that some of the most creative minds exist in the PR world.  What is needed now is to unleash that creativity and take risks – no, not financial ones, but risks with ideas that may not have a safety net as to immediate ROI.

This then is the time for corporations to tap that creativity.  It is the partnership between corporations/organizations and a PR agency or an in house team’s creative mind, that will count – a partnership where corporations/organizations say, “why not, let’s try it,” rather than “we cannot take that chance.”  It is a matter of trust in those creative ideas. As an example, just consider that if you have all the ingredients to make a lavish dinner, it’s easy to make a scrumptious one.  But if you have only a piece of bread, some pasta and lots of spices, what concoction can one create that can rival the scrumptious meal?

So, I suggest — let’s just do it.  Let’s go back to when ‘excess’ was not around and when creativity was seen as the essential ingredient needed to stretch real small PR budgets. Let’s not just shrug shoulders and say, “we’re doing what we can but are restricted by budget.” Rather, let’s consider the creative moves that can engage audiences in catapulting a brand and figure out how to move the needle, with very little thread.