At least the notion of authenticity is out there. It means we are looking for what we want to be true. That authenticity, however we define it, is important to us. It demonstrates a shift from earlier in the decade, at the tail end of an era.
Two weeks after disgraced journalist Jonah Lehrer publically apologized for the āfrailtiesā and āweaknessesā that lead to his firing from the ...
Is it wrong to say the Knight Foundation is too powerful? Is it ironic to say this when the Miami Herald may be teetering into non-existence in the next five years?
This week, Jonah Lehrer caused even more controversy when it was announced that he was paid $20,000 for his public apology about his plagiarism scanda...
The Winnie Foundation feels that plagiarists are unfairly maligned. The foundation conducted a survey, which proved that plagiarism scandals usually result in weeks of extensive reporting, thus providing new job opportunities for investigative journalists and academic committees.
Why would an organization promoting "journalistic excellence" pay $20,000 to a plagiarist to speak? I asked Knight Foundation president Alberto Ibargüen.
Standing beside a large screen displaying brutal comments on Twitter, the disgraced science writer Jonah Lehrer today delivered a talk that seemed to be aimed primarily at rehabilitating his writing career, rather than offering any insights on his journalistic misdeeds.
A google search of "I hate Lena Dunham" now produces more than a million results, which is quite a lot for someone who entered the public conscious less than a year ago. The question is why?
These past warm months have been especially riddled with revelations of academic dishonesty. And the scandals have been extensively covered by the media.
Politicians do it. Journalists do it. Even Harvard students do it. Dissembling, stonewalling and outright lies all pass for political discourse these days. The culture of deceit appears to be not only pervasive, but quite acceptable as a way of doing business.
If we're not careful, we'll end up not so much protecting originality, but criminalizing routines that are integral to some of the most broadly beneficial practices of contemporary reporting.
Jonah Lehrer is not merely a former New Yorker writer who happened to be a plagiarist and fabricator (as well as a man about town!) He was also, in hi...
Jonah Lehrer's reputation took another big hit on Friday, when Wired ended its relationship with the writer for failing "to meet WIRED editorial stand...
Studies insist half of all people fib at least twice a day. Still, it's consistently creative people, not corporate publicists or teenage babysitters that rank the highest. Why?
No apologizer in history has ever voluntarily confessed to any other of his misdeeds. These subsequent mishaps are only pointed out by others -- because the miscreants never really admit to what they have done wrong in the first place.
I am a fan of Malcolm Gladwell and his brand of writers (their books and articles make entertaining reads and add much to literary journalism and nonfiction); I just have a problem with it being called scientific writing. I read actual science on a daily basis. This is not it.
In the Internet age, everything we say becomes a potential building block for others to use, and the only way to ensure a solid foundation based on trust is to be truthful. And as Jonah Lehrer learned, lies will topple your world.
As a society, we rarely celebrate simple competence and the ability to deliver. Instead, we demand superstars. This non-stop need to do better and better is what unifies Lehrer with Wall Street miscreants.
The lack of intellectual integrity in Lehrer's work has been obvious all along. Only our cultural institutions welcomed it nonetheless because it fulfilled our need for bite-sized intellectual products.