Jason Unger

David Richards, Technology Journalism's Biggest Plagiarist

Posted by junger - 12/19/07 at 07:12:47 pm

You may have never heard of David Richards, but if you're writing anything in the technology sector, he's probably familiar with your work.

You see, Richards is the biggest plagiarist in technology journalism today, consistently stealing content from Web sites and re-publishing under his own byline.

Richards is in management at SmartHouseNews, an Australian Web site owned by publishing house 4SquareMedia. Oddly, 4SquareMedia has no Web site, as its official domain is a parked hosting page, and its .net equivalent reveals that "this is a test."

Phil Sim at Squash has an excellent background on Richards, who wrote a questionable story on 60% of Windows Vista needing to be re-written.

Without a doubt, Richards is the most notorious and controversial technology journalist in Australia and it won't surprise anyone down under in the tech media or IT industries that he's managed to get himself embroiled in this kind of saga.

First things, first. Richards is a real, bona fide journalist. He's not an amateur blogger. He's not a techie, who took up a writing. He's got a Fleet Street background and was responsible for one of the most, important investigative journalism works ever published in Australia when his expose on the Painters and Dockers union uncovered extensive corruption and sparked a historical Royal Commission.

Richards is also a successful entrepreneur. He started a PR company, Weston Communications, which he built up and sold and following that he founded a publishing company DWR Media, which he flogged to US publisher Penton Media for up to $US8 million (Penton would about 2 years later offload the division for a pittance).

Along the way, though, he's ticked a lot of people off. He's brash, pushy and thrives on controversy. He always seems to be suing someone, or else being sued. In the past few months, he's been accused on plagiarism, attacked for conflicts of interest and laid a big, steelcapped boot into one of the world's biggest PR companies.

I was first tipped off to Richards' plagiarism by Lee Distad, a contributor to CE Pro, who saw that a story he wrote ("How the Format War Affects Custom Shops") appeared on SmartHouseNews.com.au.

The article, given a new title of "Are You Making Money Out of the Format War?", has Richards as the lead writer in the byline, with Lee given second billing. The two stories are nearly identical.

We gave him no permission to publish the story, and given that Lee wrote the story, Richards' byline is completely unwarranted.

It's straight-up plagiarism.

Richards has plagiarized other stories from CE Pro, including at least one that I wrote. At least two of the stories (originals here and here) have his sole byline (copies here and here).

When I contacted Richards to remove Lee's story from his site, he ignored my email, even though I said I wanted to keep it civil. One week later, I re-sent the email, CC'ing the contacts of SmartHouseNews's Web site, including sales, marketing and editorial.

Richards replied, saying, "This was removed a week ago."

But it wasn't. And, as of this writing, it's still there.

It isn't just CE Pro that Richards plagiarizes.

He's plagiarized TWICE (his version here), Big Picture Big Sound, BusinessWeek (original and copy) and The Hollywood Reporter (original and copy).

He's republished stories from Residential Systems (original and copy) and Stereophile (original and copy).

He's even republished feature stories from CE Pro as from a "US Wire Service" (original and copy).

I could keep on going on about stories he's copied, his continued acts of plagiarism and his general disregard for other's work, but I would be here all night.

Richards is a disgrace to journalism and should be shunned by the technology industry — journalists, manufacturers and marketing folks alike. I agree with Robert Scoble, who called for Richards to be fired after his Vista-rewrite story. Can him.

On SmartHouseNews's site right now, there are advertisements from Pioneer and Mitsubishi. You are decent companies, but you shouldn't support publications based in plagiarism. Please consider dropping your advertising.

Head-On Journalism: Sacrificing Yourself For the Story

Posted by junger - 12/08/07 at 09:12:45 pm

Title says it all.

Technology Journalists: Under Pressure From Advertisers

Posted by junger - 12/03/07 at 12:12:29 pm

I get tons of press releases every day. Most of them are filled with junk; a couple are actually worth reading.

Then, every once in a while, there's the one press release that's so astounding you wonder what these marketing people are thinking.

This press release was forwarded to me today, and I have no intention of posting anything about it — whatsoever.

I've cut out most of the important information, so unless you got it too, you won't know who it's from.

Subject: hot new product – pseudo press release
*** BIG NEWS — CAN YOU SHARE WITH THE WEB PERSON WHO POSTS NEWS/PRESS RELEASES ON YOUR SITE????? ***
We have a brand new line of xxxxxxxxxxxx – cutting edge!

Pretty cool, actually. Under the guise of a press release, can you post this info in your news area on the homepage?

The relationship between journalists and marketers in the technology industry — one where the advertisers are the ones who we cover — can often seem very gray.

Case in point: Jeff Gerstmann, the editorial director of Gamespot recently fired reportedly because of his poor review of Kane & Lynch, a game heavily marketed and advertised on his site.

(Gerstmann spoke with Joystiq, standing behind his review of the game.)

Not that long ago, PC World's Harry McCracken quit his job after new CEO Colin Crawford killed a story called "Ten Things I Hate About Apple." McCracken got the last laugh, however, when Crawford was re-assigned and Harry came back onboard.

This quandary — covering the people who advertise with our publications — is unique to "disposable-income" publications (technology, entertainment, style, etc.). Mac Slocum and I have discussed this at length, and it's something that seemingly will always exist.

I'm in a relatively good situation — the CEO of my company has made it well known (to both advertisers and employees) that he does not get involved with editorial decisions. But the reality is that we often get requests for more coverage from advertisers, saying that we're "ignoring them" or the like.

As journalists, we're here to provide quality content to our readers. If they didn't believe in our editorial independence, they wouldn't come to us for information.