UMich Journalist Plagiarizes Crimson

A writer for the University of Michigan’s daily student newspaper was fired this week after the paper’s editors discovered that she had lifted text nearly verbatim from several media sources, including The Crimson.

The Michigan Daily’s editors found instances of plagiarism in four articles written by Michigan undergraduate Devika R. Daga, according to a letter from The Daily’s editor-in-chief, Karl A. Stampfl.

One of the articles, entitled “Didn’t get your ‘Kicks’?: indie group struggles with coherent live act,” published in The Daily’s Nov. 15 edition, included language written by Crimson editor Leon Neyfakh in a concert review published on Oct. 17, 2003.

Neyfakh was formerly editor-at-large of The Crimson’s weekend magazine, Fifteen Minutes.

The first paragraph of Daga’s article is nearly identical to Neyfakh’s opening.

The Daily was alerted to Daga’s plagiarism through a letter to the editor sent early Monday morning, Stampfl said.

Daga was fired from The Daily Tuesday morning.

Crimson President Kristina M. Moore ’08 said that Daga’s four articles “demonstrate real negligence on the part of the writer and editors.”

“There’s no internalizing or paraphrasing of Leon’s work, just blatant plagiarizing of his lede,” Moore said.

Stampfl said that The Daily does not tolerate plagiarism, but added that the act “isn’t entirely preventable.”

“We have had some initiatives to prevent it, and they probably weren’t as effective as they should have been because they weren’t carried out stringently in the long term,” Stampfl said.

Neyfakh said he was not upset with Daga for plagiarizing his work: on the contrary, he was “flattered.”

“I certainly don’t condone it, but I didn’t take it personally,” Neyfakh said.

Daga did not respond to requests for comment.

Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government Martin Linsky, a former journalist, said that The Daily was right to fire Daga.

“You have to take strong action against the perpetrator, or else you send mixed signals to your staff,” Martin said. “Once someone crosses the line, you have to take that kind of action. Otherwise the culture will stay the same.”

This is not the first instance of plagiarism the paper has faced in recent years. The Daily has seen two other plagiarism cases since 2004, according to Stampfl.

“The previous two times, we promised a comprehensive effort to prevent its reoccurrence,” Stampfl wrote in his letter. “The editors carried out the steps they promised at the time, but some of the initiatives have not been continued with their original rigor.”

In response to this week’s events, The Daily has formed a committee—whose membership includes the heads of The Daily’s content boards—to address the paper’s plagiarism-prevention policies, Stampfl said.

Martin said that concerns about plagiarism are on the rise in the media.

“There is a lot of evidence for more scrutiny and attention and a lot more care being paid to plagiarism by editors and publishers,” he said.

—Staff writer Jamison A. Hill can be reached at jahill@fas.harvard.edu.