[Vision2020] How to Monetize Plagiarism

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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June 7, 2013
How to Monetize Plagiarism By JOE NOCERA

This is a column about Jonah Lehrer, the 31-year-old disgraced former New
Yorker writer who recently — sigh — landed a contract for a
book<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/business/media/after-his-fall-jonah-lehrer-shops-a-book-on-the-power-of-love.html>about
love. (Yes, love.) But I want to start by recalling another disgraced
former magazine writer: Stephen Glass.

Glass was once a Washington
wunderkind<http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/archive/1998/09/bissinger199809>,
who wrote remarkable articles filled with fabulous scenes and quotes. It
turned out, of course, that many of the scenes and quotes were figments of
Glass’s imagination, and that 42 of his articles, spanning two-and-a-half
years, were either partially or entirely fabricated.

The New Republic, his primary employer, fired him. Other magazines that had
published his work announced investigations. And, to complete his
humiliation, a movie was made about how Glass’s fabrications had been
exposed by The New Republic’s editor at the time, Charles Lane.

In the decade and a half since he was quite properly drummed out of
journalism, Glass has led an exemplary
life<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/opinion/nocera-glasss-road-to-redemption.html>.
After his disgrace, he vowed to live honorably and honestly, and he has. He
underwent years of psychotherapy to come to terms with what he did. He
asked for forgiveness from those whom he had betrayed.

And, in 2004, he went to work as a paralegal for a lawyer in Los Angeles
who often represents the homeless. For years, Glass has been trying to get
admitted to the California bar, but the bar association has been fighting
him, saying that he lacks the appropriate character to be a lawyer. Yet I
can’t think of anyone more deserving of a second chance than Stephen Glass.

And I can’t think of anyone less deserving of one than Jonah Lehrer.

It hasn’t even been a year since the first of Lehrer’s journalistic sins
was uncovered: He was routinely recycling previously published
work<http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/lehrer-apologizes-for-recycling-work-while-new-yorker-says-it-wont-happen-again/>for
a pop science blog he had begun at The New Yorker. (His works seems
consciously modeled on Malcolm Gladwell’s.) Then, Michael Moynihan, writing
in The Tablet<http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/107779/jonah-lehrers-deceptions>magazine,
dropped a bombshell: In his best-selling book, “Imagine: How
Creativity Works,” Lehrer had made up quotes attributed to Bob Dylan.
Moynihan followed up with examples of good old-fashioned plagiarism in an
earlier Lehrer book. Several people who had been quoted by Lehrer said that
they had never uttered the words he attributed to them. Inevitably, The New
Yorker and Wired, where Lehrer also wrote, cut their ties with him. At
which point Lehrer was left to ... well, what exactly?

He certainly didn’t spend his time atoning. After he was exposed, he issued
a statement saying that “the lies are over now,” and that he was sorry for
what he had done. Then he went dark. I tried to reach him several times; I
was intensely interested in why someone with his talent and future would
risk it all by doing things that could so easily be found out. He never
responded.

In February, he popped up at the Knight
Foundation<http://www.knightfoundation.org/blogs/knightblog/2013/2/12/first-public-comments-since-plagiarism-scandal-jonah-lehrer-blames-arrogance-need-for-attention/>—
“the nation’s leading journalism funder” — where he gave a
speech entitled “My
Apology.”<http://www.jonahlehrer.com/2013/02/my-apology/>(Knight paid
him $20,000, for which it
later had to apologize<http://www.knightfoundation.org/blogs/knightblog/2013/2/13/knight-foundation-regrets-paying-lehrer-speaking-fee/>itself.)
The speech was anything but an apology. Rather, it was structured
like one of his typical mini-Malcolm articles, with discursions into a big
forensic mistake made by the F.B.I., the research of a cognitive
neuroscientist and the work of a behavior economist. His central point was
that for whatever reason, he couldn’t trust himself to do the right thing,
so he needed a structure — a “standard operating procedure” — that would
force him to do the right thing. As apologies go, it was both arrogant and
pathetic.

Now comes his book on love, which was revealed earlier this week by Julie
Bosman of The New York Times, who got ahold of his 65-page proposal. It is
more of the same. Although the first seven paragraphs are about “my fall,”
(“I have been found out. I puke into a recycling bin. And then I start to
cry.”), the book is no memoir. Like his previous books, it is intended to
be a work of pop science, an exploration into why and how we love. His
chapter outline includes catchy phrases intended to move product. His
attempts at sincerity come across as precious and phony. There is not much
doubt about what is really going on here: Instead of atoning for the
disgrace he brought on himself, Lehrer is trying to monetize it.

Although I was unable to speak to Lehrer, I did reach his editor at Simon &
Schuster, Jonathan
Karp<http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/jonathan-karp-to-head-simon-schuster/>,
whom I’ve known and respected for years. “He knows he can’t screw up
again,” Karp told me. “I’m not defending what he did, but I think we ought
to have a little compassion here. He’s not a journalist. He’s a writer, and
an unusually talented one. Everyone deserves a second chance.”

Actually, they don’t. People who make a big mistake and want a second
chance need to earn it. That’s the difference between Stephen Glass and
Jonah Lehrer.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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