Journalism is under fire from all directions. Newspapers are losing circulation and shuting down. Reporters are getting laid off. Profits are bad, and the Internet has turned the news into a commodity.

Add to the list of growing problems: plagiarism.

Most journalists used to think that bloggers were nothing but plagiarist; taking their reporting and rewriting a few sentences, then throwing up a link to the article. But then concepts such as the “link economy” and articles going viral through social media made a lot of news organizations rethink their approach to bloggers. Instead of scoffing at them, they hired bloggers for their own websites (or made reporters do it as part of their job) and welcomed the boosts in traffic that comes from lots of bloggers sharing links of their articles.

But the truth is, it’s hard to earn a living blogging the news. If you spend 3-4 hours on one blog post, with reporting, writing and editing, you aren’t going to get rich any time soon. So some enterprising bloggers are saying “to hell with it all” and just copy and pasting sentences and quotes from newspaper website

Here’s an example from yesterday. I covered President Obama’s trip to St. Louis and the protests downtown for the Riverfront Times (The Screaming Match Outside Obama’s Fundraiser Dinner). I spent about 3 hours walking around, taking photos, interviewing people and getting hassled by the cops to get of the street. But, reporting is fun for me, so I’m not complaining. But then I sit down to write the article and decide to see if anybody reported estimates of many people showed up. The first result in my Google search for Obama’s St. Louis visit is an article on Examiner.com, a website that allows local “bloggers” to publish news articles and earn money from advertising revenue. Here’s an excerpt from the article, “written” by Andrea Simoncic, the St. Louis Conservative Examiner.

64 year old Frank Scimo of Ballwin helped organize a group of about 100 people to stand outside St. Charles high school to support the president and his speech on health care reform.

“I believe the people should have health insurance,” Scimo said. He pointed to his step daughter, who has been denied insurance due to a pre-existing problem with her knees, as a representative of those who lack insurance but need it.

Organizer of the nonprofit Jobs for Justice, Amy Smoucha, 42, said she left the president’s speech full of confidence in the president and his plan for health care. “I’m happy to see he is so sincere about fixing the health care system,” she said.

And here is an excerpt from an article written by Jake Wagman, from the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

Frank Scimo, 64, of Ballwin, said he helped organize a group of about 100 people to show up outside the high school in support of the president and health care reform.

“I believe the people should have health insurance,” he said. He pointed to his step daughter, who he said was denied insurance because of a pre-existing problem with her knees.

Amy Smoucha, organizer with the nonprofit Jobs with Justice, said she left the speech feeling confident in the president and his plan.

“I’m happy to see he is so sincere about fixing the health care system,” Smoucha, 42, said.

Notice the differences? There aren’t many. On top of that, the few words that she bothered to change or add actually make the writing worse.

But this is not about writing. This is about plagiarism. Nowhere in her article on Examiner.com does the “writer” mention where this information comes from. Just from reading it, one would assume that she was there, that she talked to all these people and got all the quotes herself. In other words, one would assume that she did some actual reporting.

But reporting, too, is quickly becoming a commodity. Sure, news loses value quickly, and a scoop is not long lived. But I believe the day when journalists allow people to blatantly rip off their reporting and writing is the day they might as well retire. You can’t tell me that I’m going to work my ass off for half a day to write an article which is going to be copy-and-pasted two minutes after it’s published and thrown on a plagiarism haven like Examiner.com so that some lazy asshole can generate some ad revenue.

As far as the example I cited, don’t think that it’s an isolated incident or only a couple of paragraphs. All you have to do is copy whole sentences and paragraphs and do a Google search to see where the information is being lifted from. If you’re going to be a plagiarist and too lazy to rewrite the article, at least have the decency to say where you got the information from. Or alternatively, just roll over and die.

There’s a fine line between being a blogger and being a parasite.