Howie Sees No Evil

Conflict-of-Interest Kurtz writes:

A high school student who briefly became a star in the Cherry Hill, N.J., Courier-Post has been forced to own up to plagiarism.

Blair Hornstine, who was covered by the paper when she successfully sued to maintain her status as the school's valedictorian, wrote a half-dozen pieces for the Courier-Post. Last week the paper said that the 18-year-old had repeatedly failed to attribute material to a variety of sources, including writings by two Supreme Court justices and Bill Clinton's speechwriters.

We could point out Konflict Kurtz's boners in his own lift-and-paste job: Hornstine never sued to "maintain her status as valedictorian," she sued to prevent other students from being named co-valedictorians along with her. Further, she was never a "star" in the paper, she submitted stories for the teen page and got zero compensation. No one ever reads that section, as evidenced by the amount of time it took someone to recognize that her columns sounded like Supreme Court opinions and Thanksgiving proclamations.

Instead, we want to remind Howie of the Washington Post's own adventures in "repeatedly fail[ing] to attribute material to a variety of sources," namely, the work of Blaine (not Blair) Harden. Why has Kurtz failed to mention of Mr. Harden's Poached Opus in his daily diary of journalistic theft?

Konflicted hacks should know better.

Of course, Ms. Hornstine's plagiarism was pretty atrocious. She even swiped part of a paper from a Berkeley think-tank with its own 51-foot sailboat. Even Doris Kearns Goodwin would be embarassed.