Plagiarism

On today's opinion page of the Wheeling Intelligencer was another Ohio editorial, and so I decided to look for the original. As I usually do, I typed into a search engine a word-for-word sentence from the editorial. The results did not list any Ogden publications. (As I've previously noted, that's not unusual -- not all Ogden editorials go online.) However, the search engine did list over 100 news sources that used that very same sentence and all were from an Associated Press story by Andrew Welsh-Huggin. Here is paragraphs three and four from his week-old story (note the words in bold):

Under the bill, Ohio power companies could once again offer energy efficiency programs such as smart thermostats or appliance rebates, with the cost covered by customers. The legislation is aimed at undoing an element of a now-tainted nuclear power plant bailout bill, which eliminated all energy efficiency programs.

The bill has the backing of the Ohio Environmental Council and state investor-owned utilities including AEP, Duke Energy and AES Corp.

Here is paragraph three from today's Wheeling Intelligencer editorial:

Under the proposal, Ohio power companies could once again offer energy efficiency programs such as smart thermostats or appliance rebates, with the cost covered by customers. The bill has the backing of the Ohio Environmental Council and state investor-owned utilities including AEP.

This is plagiarism and there is no excuse for it. And this is not the first time -- I've written about the plagiarism found in their articles, columns and op-eds on a number of occasions. (See "plagiarism" below.) There are free plagiarism checkers online if they don't want to pay for one but my hunch is that they don't care -- it takes up space and that is all that matters. Yeah, it's one more example of its total disdain for its readers.

Minor points after plagiarism

Does anybody at the Intelligencer actually look at what ends up on their editorial page? On today's page, syndicated columnist Diamond Dimond asks us to:

Look at the National Fixation About the Search for Gabby

Lucky for us, we don't have to go far to look -- at the top of the editorial page is Erick Erickson's column:

Thoughts About Gabby Petito

Yes, two of the three syndicated columns in this morning's paper are about Gabby Petito.

Finally, a front-page article features a picture of a health worker giving a booster shot that takes up at least one-third of the front page. (No bridge pictures, however.)