Plagiarism and the Bleacher Report

Since I discovered this site back in the winter I have written a little over twenty articles and three times I have encountered interesting situations when it comes to my writing.

Once, an article in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, written by the father of an ex-girlfriend I had dated for a long time and on the week she was set to be married appeared in said newspaper. This article was written on an exact topic I had written on in the Bleacher Report and containing many of the same facts a few months prior.

These facts in and of themselves would not have been all that odd except for his opening line, which read: "It’s funny how you stumble onto things when you’re actually looking for something else." At the time, if you had googled my name, that article was one of the first things that appeared. You can see my article here and you can see his article here.

At the time his article came out I must admit I was a little more than curious and upset.

Then recent events of my last two articles I have written on the Bleacher Report have made me re-evaluate the situation.

I recently wrote an article entitled "Atlanta Braves: A Tale of Two Cities". Unfortunately, this article is no longer available on this website because of my poor timing.

A few hours before I wrote such article another writer, Chad Haynie, chose to write on the same exact topic, that being the Braves great play at home and horrific play on the road. Although Chad's article contained many more stats and was, admittedly, better written my article was taken down by the Bleacher Report's Content and Community Director, Zander Freund, because, as Zander said in his email to me it was "was copied verbatim" from Chad's article.

There was one major problem with such an assertion. It implied the article's were identical. In fact, the articles had one out of place word that put them in common, other than the topic. Chad's article talked of a "tale of two teams" while my title borrowed from Charles Dickens in a similar fashion.

Apparently, on the Bleacher Report you must be careful of using alliteration or the Content Police will delete your articles without any questions.

Unfortunately, the articles had very little in common other than the main topic. While Chad delved into stats I looked at the Braves being two distinctively different teams. One old and the other young. I did not have a single stat in the article. In fact I did not even put in the Braves home and road records, mainly because I did not want to look them up.

Nevertheless, my article was taken down without asking and I was thrown into a rage at Zander. I understood where Chad was coming from in thinking I had taken his article. I had been there before. However, I had not read his article at all until Zander told me my article had been deleted.

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