I'm torn as well ...

I did an internship at a small conglomerate of newspapers in NJ while in college, my editors were awesome people and I keep asking myself: What would they have done if that was me?

What really bothers me is that we're talking about a 19 year old who has probably had minimal experience with journalism besides her high-school newspaper. When you bring someone like that into your organization, YOU are assuming all of the risks that come along with a lack of experience. An editor should be fact checking anything that an intern writes with a fine-tooth comb.

I think there were better ways that the newspaper could have handled this. Ways that would have preserved the paper's credibility and this poor girl's career.

Ryan Said it All-Fact Check !

I absolutely agree with the editor's decision because these are some of the worst examples of plagiarism I've ever seen from a supposedly "professional" individual. Of the four stories posted, only one of them is even mildly defensible, the rest are just copy and paste jobs with a word or two added. I don't care if you're nine, 19 or 90, or whether you've only written for your high school paper or the Washington Post, this is simply inexcusable. This intern smeared a paper's good name (at a time when they can't really afford any more loss of credibility) and effectively blacklisted herself for life from any other publication. I'd recommend a change in majors, because this is one student who is NOT going to ever be a journalist.

The newspaper staff should have made sure that the intern knew how to properly cite before she was allowed to submit her own work. She has not received her degree in journalism and therefore, may have not been ready to compose her own work. Either way, she should accept the consequences of her actions. Hopefully she will find a job after graduation

It's a shame they had an unpaid intern writing front page stories and the stories weren't checked.

On the other hand, after looking at some of her self promoting and arrogance on line, and due to the fact she was going to be a junior, has written for several publications already, touted herself as an "award winning journalist", chosen for "Latin America in Words and Pictures" — "an upper-level reporting course taught by a Pulitzer Prize winner in which the top 12 students in the college are selected for entrance"(this off her google profile) — and this from a student at a journalism school that touts itself and one of the top ten in the country, this can only be a good thing for journalism.

Your record stays with you after 18, it's time people start excepting that fact and stop acting like everyone is a kid until they are 27.

At 19, I most definitely knew that plagiarism is wrong. I was so concerned about it that I footnoted papers almost obsessively--I wanted to be sure that I was not taking credit for someone else's words.

Still, I think naming her may have been a bit much. How hard would it have been to say "an intern"? Sure, some would have dug into it and found out who the intern was, but it would have been a little more subtle. And as others have pointed out, she did something wrong--and other people fell down on their jobs by not catching it. There were a lot of errors here. I'd like to know how the others are being addressed.

Making the story public would have served as an object lesson without her name. Sure, for some people the idea that they could be so publicly named would be a key part of that object lesson. But those people probably think they'll get away with it anyhow.

For anyone who's interested, the editor from The Gazette left a thoughtful comment regarding the paper's decision to name the intern on my blog this evening. Here's a link to the comment - http://bit.ly/s1d7x

I think the punishment fit the crime here. Like a lot of people here, I went to journalism school. I knew at 19 not to rip off someone else's work. Shoot, I knew in 8th grade when our school newspaper consisted of 20 sheets of paper copies and stapled. What would have not naming her have done for anyone involved? She would have done it again.

Should stories be fact checked? Of course. But most editors are not going to send every story through google every morning to make sure their reporters didn't lift their story from the New York Times. Not stealing other people's work is kind of the unwritten rule of journalism. Wait, it's kind of the unwritten rule of all professions. You don't try to pass off someone else's work as your own.

You're always going to be more mature later. Even when you're 45, you'll still not be as mature as someone who is 55.

19 is old enough to know better.

I don’t think it makes a difference whether Haley’s name was published or not. In either scenario, the Gazette would refuse to give her a reference and her university would be notified. Therefore the outcome is still the same, namely the ruination of her credibility as a journalist and a good student. Bad news travels fast and is hard to suppress. She would have been outed anyway.

Editors are responsible for highlighting any article errors to the public, and this includes plagiarism. Their duty of care is to the paper and it’s readers, not to staff members trained in journalism ethics who not once but four times blatantly steal work, pass it off as their own and place the companies reputation at risk. Her youth is no excuse. I was working for a corporate at 19 and knew very well where the line was and the consequences for crossing it.

In business, your credibility is all you have and once you’ve lost it, it’s extremely difficult to win back. I have a feeling that Haley is learning this the hard way.

You know, I work really, really hard to write. Writing is not something that's so impossible you have to steal work from others. Outing somebody like this may have been over the top, but the crime is there. There's just no place for it. All it takes is a simple attribution, request for permission, or whichever.

It was dishonest, and that's the problem. Not the severity of the dishonesty. Think of all the people out there writing inane columns and weblogs. These people do what they can; they may not be the best writers out there, but what they write is *theirs*.

It's unconscionable to steal work.

As for google having an interminable memory... It's a big web out there. If the "accused" goes forth and creates lots of _good_ content, instead of trying to disappear, it won't seem nearly as big a deal. Penelope, in fact, talks about this very thing. The bigger a deal you make out of something, the more attention you draw to something private (even as private as oral sex!), the more people pay attention to it. That's the exact _wrong_ approach. She should cop to it, apologize, continue on with her life, and produce good, journalistic content. If that's what she wants to do.