Patch Blogger Dan Kimber: My Contrition

This was to be a few parting words to appear in the paper I wrote for since 2003, but that was not to be.  

After being cited for plagiarism, the editor of the Glendale News-Press decided against any further contribution from me, even on the Community Forum page to offer my contrition. I thank Patch for allowing me the opportunity to try and explain as well as offer an apology to those in the area familiar with my column.   

And by explaining, I don’t mean to offer justification for my lapses in judgment but I would like to put a slightly different perspective to the charges against me than were leveled by the editor of the GNP.

After writing more than 400 articles for the paper, twenty were flagged for using material without attributing the source. For the most part, that material was not a significant portion of the article (I invite anyone to look into the archives and see for themselves) with the exceptions noted by the editor. He accuses me of plagiarizing an entire column which I wrote on Sept. 1 about cyber-bulling, and here I think an explanation is in order, given the severity of the charge.

I began the article citing Assembly Bill 746 followed by a reference to a student suicide that was linked to a cyber-bullying incident. I then offered a definition of cyber-bullying followed by the sentence, “Research on this topic reveals some alarming statistics,”  followed by the contents of that 2010 report. That was followed by the sentence, “A complete list of state laws can be found on the National Conference of State Legislatures’ website, www.ncsl.org.”    

One paragraph later I wrote that, “My research on the subject brought me to a software application called ZoneAlarm SocialGuard... ”. What followed were the contents of an email sent to me by the company, Net Nanny, which I requested after interviewing the president of that company over the phone for over an hour.   What I should have written next was something like, “Russ Warner, the president of Net Nanny, explains how his product works ….” but it seemed implicit by the technical description that followed that it was not my own. The conclusion in that column was my own.  

That may not be the most creative piece I've written, but I have a hard time seeing it as "plagiarizing an entire column." In a few other articles I cited factual material as presented by another writer and should have attributed those sources. On rare occasions I did indeed use another author’s phrasing, sometimes involving a single sentence and more rarely, an entire paragraph.

Technically plagiarism is committed when one writer uses even the idea of another writer, even when different words are used to express that idea, without attributing the source of the original thought. I would submit that that is common practice among writers, including editors of small papers, although it is rarely, if ever, cited.

One “egregious” example of my plagiarism cited by the GNP editor was a piece I wrote on the plight of children in Cambodia. Two paragraphs were cited as being drawn verbatim from a book entitled, Cambodia Angkor, A Lasting Legacy. They were, in fact, part of an introduction that I wrote for the author, my friend Pierre Odier.   

To say that I occasionally “borrowed” material to make a point or to weave into my own narrative, is a euphemism, to be sure, just as it is a euphemism for the person who “fudges” on his income tax returns to decrease his tax liability.        

For all of you good people who have taken the time to read my many words; for all of my old friends and so many new friends I’ve made from the column; for the people who fervently disagreed and those who heartily concurred, and mostly to my students who for 35 years I have endeavored to teach honesty and a search for the truth-- I was wrong.   

I was careless, I got lazy and it was dishonest.       

I have searched my own conscience, I have put this into perspective and I am determined to put this behind me. I want most to apologize to my wife, my mother and my daughters whose pride in a husband, a son and a father has been undiminished  even in the midst of this sorry episode that I have brought upon the family.   

Their love and the passage of time will heal what is now a gaping wound. I will learn from this and grow from it and hopefully be a better man because of it. I have lost a voice that was an immense source of pride and satisfaction, but I have not lost confidence in my ability to write.   

Finally, I have “fallen from grace,” as one local commentator put it, and I accept that verdict, but only insofar as it relates to those few occasions where I lacked faith in myself, where I forgot, even for a fleeting moment, that most basic commandment, “To my own self, be true.”    

FOR THE RECORD: That is a paraphrase from Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene III — Polonius speaking to his son Laertes.