Blatant plagiarism (24 Suns story)
I know there's been some discussion about plagiarism is and isn't in local food news... and I usually don't say a whole lot because it's frankly not worth my time to engage with the one outlet who is notorious for it. But today, something happened that is just so blatant that I have to share.
So I wrote a piece for San Diego Magazine about 24 Suns opening in Oceanside. I interviewed the owners and put up an article yesterday (1/23). Didn't realize until this morning (1/24) that we accidentally typed "2012" instead of "2021" as their original opening date. Mistakes happen, right? It's updated now here: https://sandiegomagazine.com/food-drink/food-news/24-suns-chinese-restaurant-oceanside/
Well... if you look at SanDiegoVille's coverage of it, you can see our words pretty much copied exactly... including the typo. I'm including it here as a screenshot before he changes it.
This is plagiarism. Every outlet that covers food and drink news are going to have overlap, and that's completely fine. Outlets do not own stories, but they do own their original copy. What's NOT fine is NOT talking to any businesses directly (I confirmed with 24 Suns they did not speak to SDV and are pissed on our behalf) and running text through a chatbot or something to rearrange some sentences to just a small degree that you'd get kicked out of college for such blatant copying.
I know some people think SDM is just a bunch of pay for play coverage (it's not). 24 Suns didn't pay us. It's just something cool happening. I'm a freelancer who takes immense pride in my original work that's not informed by whatever PR mafia people think dictates stories, and I operate as ethically as I possibly can. Know where you get your news from.
