JC / Railbird

Eclipse Awards

2017 Eclipse-Winning Work Reuses 2010 Text

https://twitter.com/railbird/status/948691159311945731

It was announced on Wednesday that Daily Racing Form photographer Barbara Livingston was the winner of the 2017 Eclipse Multimedia Award for her March 24, 2017 piece, “Chasing Man o’ War’s Ghost.” Livingston has written about Man o’ War at least twice previously for DRF, and her 2017 piece opened with a striking bit of text, a note from a friend:

You told me when we were friends (age 9) that you had Man O Wars blood in you … and I believed you bc u ran really fast and could whinny like a horse.

This is the same note from a friend that begins Livingston’s 2010 post, “Man o’ War — the final portrait,” about the great horse’s last picture:

You told me when we were friends (age 9) that you had Man O Wars blood in you….and I believed you bc u ran really fast and could whinny like a horse.

The similarities did not end with that one little note.

The first paragraph of the 2017 piece is the third paragraph of the 2010 post:

For me, there is one Big Red and he was born a hundred years ago, on March 29, 1917. If others of the same nickname preceded him, they were simply opening acts. Anyone since? Call them Big Red all you want, but, to me, they are imposters.

From there, a comparison of both posts reveals that almost all of the 2010 post has been repurposed, with some rearranging, into the 2017 piece. You can view highlighted screenshots of the 2010 post and the 2017 version. Note: The 2017 screenshot is cropped to only highlight the text copied from the 2010 post, it is not the full text of the 2017 story. To view the full text of both posts on DRF, click/tap this link for 2010 and this link for 2017.

Reusing or republishing content is not unheard of in media — pieces written for one outlet may get republished in another. A publication might republish an older work made freshly relevant, or a writer may return to an older work to expand or revise it. In most instances, when this happens, the work is accompanied by a note that indicates that it was originally published elsewhere, previously published on a certain date, or that it has been revised. This is attribution, and it’s a practice that avoids the appearance of an ethical issue — deceiving your audience about the provenance of a work.

There is no such attribution on the 2017 Man o’ War piece regarding the use of 2010 copy, nor is there a link to the 2010 post, either of which would have covered DRF and Livingston against the charge of what seems to have happened here — Livingston reused her 2010 post as the basis of the 2017 multimedia piece, which has now won an Eclipse Award.

So, what’s the problem with reusing your own work, without attribution, aka self-plagiarizing? It’s lazy, for one thing. It also does your audience a disservice, passing off older work as original. And in this case, such substantial reuse may also be against the rules of the Eclipse media awards, which state that entries “must have been published or aired for the first time between November 14, 2016 and November 16, 2017.”

Alerted to the reuse, Keith Chamblin at the NTRA said on Thursday:

We have reached out for input from Daily Racing Form, which submitted the entry for Eclipse consideration, and will be discussing the situation with the Eclipse Awards Steering Committee today.

I’ll update this post when there’s a resolution to the discussion.

1/8/18: After consideration, no change.

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Related reading:

In 2012, New Yorker writer Jonah Lehrer was caught reusing his work. The recycled text was first picked up by Jim Romenesko, launching a debate about self-plagiarism and attribution. The Columbia Journalism Review summed up the case against Lehrer like so:

The rules against all manner of journalistic recycling, from sloppy attribution, to self-plagiarism, to plagiarism, are part of the basic dos-and-don’ts of the craft. Lehrer’s many fans deserve an explanation, and hopefully they’ll get one.

Livingston’s fans also deserve an explanation.

Posted in Racing on January 5, 2018 / Tagged #2017inquiry, Daily Racing Form, Eclipse Awards, Media, Multimedia

Perry Martin’s HOTY Speech

From @TVG, CONGRATS to Team California Chrome, including @TMStallions, @ShermanRacing and @EspinozasVictor. Good luck in @PegasusWorldCup! pic.twitter.com/KzpxmJv2ZX

— FanDuel Racing (@FanDuel_Racing) January 22, 2017

Perry Martin, co-owner of California Chrome, took the podium to accept the 2016 Horse of the Year award at the Eclipse Awards ceremony at Gulfstream Park on January 21, 2017. His speech is transcribed below.

We only have a few of our group up here tonight, so it’s not quite as bad as our winner’s circle pictures.

We won the older horse of the year award earlier tonight and everybody told me I did a wonderful job, so I’d just like to say, “Ditto.”

Also, when I rented this tux, I looked in the pocket, and there was this little packet of stuff in there, and it had three lines of writing on it, and the first line said, “Desiccant.”

Guy over here doesn’t know what that is.

Excuse me, sir, do you do the Beyer numbers for the Daily Racing Form?

Let me help you, the second line says silica gel. Still no clue? Now I know what the third line was for.

The third line said, “Do not eat.”

So now we know why that third line was on there. I was thinking, you know, I know babies like to put stuff in their mouths, but babies don’t know how to read, so it would be ridiculous to put that on there for them, so we know, I knew there was some segment, some segment of the population that needed that on there, and now I know it’s turf writers.

Turf writers are great. I learn a lot about myself reading the articles about me. I read at least three articles that said I had a dry sense of humor, and that’s why I had to go with a desiccant joke.

Turf writers really care about me. I can tell they care about me because they’re always asking me how I feel.

“Perry, how does it feel to win the Kentucky Derby?”

“Wonderful.”

“Perry, how does it feel to lose the Pennsylvania Derby?”

“Terrible.”

“Perry, how does it feel to win the Dubai World Cup?”

“Wonderful.”

“Perry, how does it feel to lose the Breeders’ Cup Classic?”

“Which one?”

“You pick.”

“Terrible.”

Does anybody see a pattern developing? Before I go too far — I actually have, since — you said we had a lot of time, right? — turf writers, at least three articles I read recently said that Denise and I live in Yuba City, California.

We haven’t lived in Yuba City, California since September of 2014. We moved to the beautiful, picturesque town of Alpine, Wyoming. Every morning I get up, have a coffee, look out my kitchen window, and the elk just look at me. It’s a lovely place.

But Yuba City is a special place. People ask me why we left Yuba City. Basically, the answer is, because we could.

Let me tell you about Yuba City. In 2014, Denise, me, my son Perry, Jr., and my daughter Kelly, who’s up here, we took the train to Churchill Downs, to the Kentucky Derby. People say, “Why did you take the train?”

What I do is failure analysis for the Air Force, I did a lot of crash investigation, and every night at the dinner table, I’d tell the family stories about what goes wrong with planes. So for some reason, my son won’t fly. I don’t know why that is.

So we took the train. And we were on the train — it’s an interesting story — one of our coworkers texted us a message saying you have to go to this link, there’s a story about you that the local news did.

The local news — we lived in Yuba City at the time — the local news stations were in Sacramento, California, and a lot of people in Yuba City don’t breed and own Kentucky Derby winners, or favorites for the Kentucky Derby. I don’t know why that is. But this was a unique thing, so they sent a camera crew out.

We were on our way to the Derby, on the train, and we watched this video. And here’s a reporter standing in front of our house, interviewing our neighbor.

And first thing I did was look at Denise and said, “I knew I should have mowed the lawn. I knew it.”

But the next thing I said was, you know, “They don’t seem to be able to separate us from mass murderers. Because that’s what they do for mass murderers, they send reporters to their house and they interview their neighbors. Well, people who have the favorites for the Kentucky Derby are treated the same way.”

So they rounded up our neighbor. She came out, and a reporter said, “How does it feel to live next door to the owners of the favorite for the Kentucky Derby?”

And she said, “The city of Yuba City animal control just cited me for having chickens in my backyard. If I can’t have chickens in my backyard, why can these people have a horse? That’s what I want to know.”

[Music begins playing.]

Chrome never lived in our backyard. He was at Harris Farms the whole time.

But that wasn’t enough for the camera crew. They went on their phones and they found a local hot spot, it was the Happy Viking bar. And they took the crew to the Happy Viking and interviewed everybody on the bar.

Is that music for me to get off?

Posted in Racing on January 22, 2017 / Tagged California Chrome, Eclipse Awards, Horse of the Year, Perry Martin, Speeches

Clinched?

Bill Finley:

I’ll Have Another has likely clinched Horse of the Year, but there may be an alternative to him in Joe Hirsch Turf Classic winner Point Of Entry.

I admit, I’m a little confounded that anyone thinks I’ll Have Another is a leading Horse of the Year contender, much less that he’s a lock. You have to go back to 1999 to find a Kentucky Derby winner who didn’t race past Triple Crown season named Horse of the Year, and that was Charismatic, honored:

… after a season that was so lackluster some felt no one had done enough to deserve the award. In fact, 11 voters abstained in the Horse of the Year category. Another apparent protest vote was cast for a steeplechase horse named Saluter, the winner of the four-mile Virginia Gold Cup.

This season isn’t over, but it hardly figures to end that badly. Game on Dude, Ron the Greek, Wise Dan, and Point of Entry all have strong claims to the title if any of them win their Breeders’ Cup races.

10/6/12 Addendum: Another vote for IHA as HOTY leader heading into BC. Clearly, I’m out of step. Must be my bias toward whole-year campaigns.

Posted in Racing on October 5, 2012 / Tagged Breeders' Cup, Charismatic, Eclipse Awards, Horse of the Year, I'll Have Another