'By Jim Romenesko' ...wait... is it actually?

Justin Peters of the Columbia Journalism Review literally took the words out of my mouth within the first line of his article on the Poynter Institute's Jim Romenesko fiasco.

"The most frustrating thing about the Jim Romenesko affair is the way that so many people who should know better are insisting that there is no Jim Romenesko affair," he said.

I could not have said that any better myself.

For the current generation, Romenesko was making a name for himself in 1999 while we watched Britney Spears, Spongebob and Napster make their debuts (oh, the 90's).

Romenesko, who has been writing for Poynter for 12 years, is known for the blog under his name, which sums up current news events and media information.

However, he has been the topic of conversation lately after being caught by his editor with his hands in the "plagiarism" cookie jar. His editor, Julie Moos, broke a story on Poynter's website almost three weeks ago to cover her bases after an assistant editor at the Columbia Journalism Review (Erika Fry) brought to her attention that within Romenesko's work, he picks and chooses where and how to quote other people's work.

Moos then decided to put a temporary halt on his blog to look into the situation further, telling the public that from now on all of his work will be looked over with a fine-tooth comb before hitting the Web.

Since then, there have been split opinions on whether or not Moos dealt with this situation cordially and whether or not she was right to openly criticize Romenesko.

Moos, released this statement in her article: "This style represents Jim's deliberate choice to be transparent about the information's origins while using the source's own words to represent his or her work.

"If only for quotation marks, it would be exactly right. Without those quotation marks, it is incomplete and inconsistent with our publishing practices and standards on Poynter.org."

She then went on to display a piece by Romenesko's in which chunky graphs existed with no citations, link backs, or quote marks and the words were not his.

Poynter's guidelines have been published on its website since Jan. 7, 2004 (they were last updated this past March) and have served as blueprint at times for other journalists.

With that said, I would assume that it's staff members, especially someone as popular as Romenesko, would want to keep the integrity of the organization strong by upholding said guidelines. By blatantly ignoring the standards, Romenesko was just disrespectful and lazy.

Did he skip the collegiate life or snooze past his alarm in high school and miss English?

If not, then I would personally like to know the justifications behind him making such a rookie move as to not quote his sources in numerous articles and then claim it's just his style. BUT, what's more disturbing in this entire scenario is the fact that other journalists are backing Romenesko up! While Moos made the right decision to start editing Romenesko's work more closely, announcing it to the public might have been overkill.

He certainly deserves a slap on the wrist but it did not need to be in the form of public humiliation and plenty of his peers seem to agree.

At the time, Joe Pompeo, of Capital New York, tweeted, "I'm late to weigh in on this, but just wanted to go on record saying I've never had any issues with @Romenesko's aggregation of my work."

Financial writer Felix Salmon, who posted on his tumblr, followed Pompeo up with "Jim Romenesko is a KING of the blogosphere.

"He's the kind of person you should be looking to as an exemplar of best practices in the blogosphere. If your guidelines go against what Jim is doing, then there might well be something wrong with your guidelines."

Yet, Salmon, among others, seem to have forgotten that what Romenesko did was wrong and defending his actions only perpetuates bad behavior.

In an article in the Washington Post, Erik Wemple wrote, "[Romenesko] has monitored the industry like no one else. If he occasionally neglected to put some quotation marks around text that had come from our stories, so what…therefore, Moos's decision to turn it all into a public affair is a crock."

So what? Hey Wemple, check the rule book, because it's simple: If you didn't write and you want to repeat it then give proper credit; if you're repeating it verbatim put it in quotes. Young writers learn that before ever enrolling in JRL 100.

I can only hope that journalists like Romenesko, who are perfectly fine with bending the rules, retire soon. That way, maybe (just maybe) the rest of us can get back to doing.