Mulika Mwizi!

I am writing this to shed light on a disturbing trend I have noticed. Some time ago, there was the Letter To My Thirteen Year Old Self series of blog posts. I call it series for luck of a better word. One thing I admired with the bloggers blogging about this subject  is that they recognized that it was not their original idea. Most had been nudged by fellow bloggers to do a similar post. Soon, it became like a trend in the blog world and most blogs had a ‘Letter to My Thirteen Year Old Self’ post , whether the authors had been tagged or not.  I was shocked during the same time, to see a similar article in the News paper. Obviously, it was not the journalist’s original idea and because we ALL know where he had gotten the idea, I expected him to say that he had stumbled on something on the internet that prompted him to write an article under that title….or something like that.

But no! He didn’t. My cousin back at the village who doesn’t know what a blog is, must have marveled at the creativity and originality of this particular writer that day!

As I write this , I risk being accused of crying louder than the bereaved. No one died, really, but I am rattled!  How can a whole journalist who is PAID to write stuff for a newspaper , copy a blogger’s thoughts ….and not have the decency to give credit . Look at this and tell me : This blog post was posted by one @ItsnowRC . How come days later we have this story carried by Nation. Same script, different cast! What are these journalists showing us?

Secondly, I have sometimes seen some tweetters copying and pasting other people’s tweets and not bothering to give credit. Probably that is something I should add to this post : ‘Why I Unfollowed You‘. I know, I have unfollowed someone, who by the way, is a journalist, simply because I could not stand their plagiarizing habits!

I think it is inappropriate, shameless, even rude, for a journalist to copy-paste stuff…. and not give credit. And why copy anyway? Writing is your job! Surely you can do better than that. That’s why they hired you.

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