Carole Lutness Plagiarism Allegation

An anonymous person named JillQPublic sent information concerning alleged plagiarism by Carol Lutness in Signal opinion columns to several media outlets.  The West Ranch Beacon published the information first here.  http://westranchbeacon.com/blog/2009/12/commentary-is-plagiarism-at-the-signal-common/

The person makes a disturbing assertion that The Signal and others would tolerate plagiarism from a left of center columnist but not from a right of center columnist, citing what they believe to be the rough handling of Lynn Vakay. 

I for one believe that once The Signal investigates and verifies the allegation, Ms. Lutness should be handled the same way as Lynn Vakay, i.e. forbidden from further publication and have her prior columns stripped from the web archives.

The anonymous person further feels that these “unpaid” columnists are being held to too high a standard.  Both Ms. Vakay and Ms. Lutness desire the spotlight of the columns to feed their own personal political ambitions, and one would certainly question their motives.  Some might say they are trying to make themselves appear “smarter” than they actually are by “borrowing” from people with a more coherent thought process.

Unfortunately, the Signal does not have the resources to verify the uniqueness of any given column submission, and relies on readers to “out” plagiarism.  At that point their only choice is to ban further submissions since that columnist can no longer be trusted.

Fortunately, The Signal will probably address this ongoing problem by only allowing local columnists to discuss local issues, since these are much less likely to be plagiarized since they would by necessity be unique and not generic.