First Draft by Tim Porter

Quick Shots: Sorry-ism, plagiarism, humility, diversity

 Mea culpa mania: The publishing power of the Internet, which provides a technology-enabled platform for media critics, is partly responsible for the recent wave of newspaper confessions about poor coverage, says Geneva Overholser. "Each of these criticisms is far more powerful than it used to be," she tells the Christian Science Monitor, "and in turn causes newspapers to feel more compelled to be transparent. That is a good thing." Indeed, it is.

 Another one down, another one gone: Stephen Dunphy, Seattle Times business columnist, "took careless shortcuts that in the end constituted plagiarism" and is off the paper after 37 years. He had his wrist slapped for a similar rip-and-write a few years ago. I'm for zero tolerance - one theft and you're gone. (Thanks, Media Drop.)

 Eye-level journalism: Jeff Jarvis argues that "we must bring journalism down to a human level, down from the tower it built to separate itself from the public, down to eye level." He points to the Hodding Carter speech I wrote about last week and concludes that "the journalist is a member of the community, not apart from it. The journalist is a citizen equal to every other citizen. The journalist is human."

 Measuring diversity: "How much diversity in the journalism ranks is enough?" asks Dawn Garcia. She point to the Bill Dedman and Stephen Doig study of newsroom diversity as a starting place to look for an answer. She doesn't, though, consider diversity in other than ethnic terms.