When 'repurposing' becomes plagiarism

US broadcasting journalist Judy Muller highlights a disturbing trend in the States, cloaked beneath the ugly term repurposing. It has a legitimate aim - to take news stories done by traditional news organisations and modify them to fit other formats, i.e., the net. But that is being undermined by "a few outlaws" who "grab original material and post it as their own." Muller, a former news correspondent for CBS and ABC who is now an associate professor at USC's Annenberg School of Communication, writes: "Where I come from, that's known as plagiarism." Her students think so, too, after discovering that their work on immigration had been misappropriated without attribution. So watch out, she says, for the kind "repurposing" where one person's hard work is misused to enhance another's reputation. (Via Public Eye)