It's very difficult for a journalist to cite his/her sources, because one is not allowed to use footnotes. (I found this out when I wrote a piece for *Slate* some years back.) If one doesn't wish to clog his/her prose with "as so-and-so said in his 1967 article, 'Blah Blah' that appeared in volume 5 of the Journal of Whatever," then it's hard to see how not to plagiarize. Allowing footnotes would probably solve the problem 95% of the time.

D. K. Shuger

Good point. Another might be to have a journalist give a list of her sources to the magazine, which would provide them upon request. (It would save column-inches, too.)

Of course, internet journalism and blogs can always have links. It has been noted that bloggers are generally good at providing their sources; perhaps the prohibition on footnotes is one more reason for print journalism to step aside.

--Devin Carless

"Providing them on request" would be absurdly inadequate.

Debora Shuger:

It's very difficult for a journalist to cite his/her sources, because one is not allowed to use footnotes. (I found this out when I wrote a piece for *Slate* some years back.) If one doesn't wish to clog his/her prose with "as so-and-so said in his 1967 article, 'Blah Blah' that appeared in volume 5 of the Journal of Whatever," then it's hard to see how not to plagiarize. Allowing footnotes would probably solve the problem 95% of the time.

D. K. Shuger

"Hard to see how not to plagiarize?". Umm..errr.. I just solved your problem. I put quotes around the text you created- that's what you do when confronted with seven or eight lines of text you didn't write. And then begin with, "As D.K. Shuger said yesterday..." .

Newspapers and other journalism do not have the same protocols regarding citation that scholarship has. X says, "XXXXXXXXXXX" is all that is needed.

When the columns are put together in book form, then complete citations are necessary.

I'm not condoning what Dowd did--she did not follow the minimalist protocols of her profession.

footnotes? It isn't a college paper it is a column or news article which is designed to quote sources. Dowd surely lifted the quote thinking no one would notice. That was unprofessional and the Slate reaction goes to show just how far down the toilet journalism has gone.

When did putting some quotation marks and "so-and-so said" become such a burden? And interestingly enough, most writers are able to avoid plagiarism 100% of the time without using footnotes, while you seem unsure if you'd be able to do that even if you could use them.

The OP presents citation as a stylistic burden that we readers simply cannot ask journalists to meet. As just about everyone has noted, the argument is clearly misdirected.