Plagiarism leads to losing job

Gadi Dechter in the article "Early Warning" (City Paper Online) brings together a variety of opinions of the resignation or "firing" of Michael Olesker, a columnist for 27 years for the Sun, a paper in Baltimore. Olesker resigned due to including "small amounts of background material that appeared copied, without attribution, from The Washington Post and The New York Times," along with an earlier warning about the lack of attribution. Gadi reporrts that some feel the punishment was extreme, that he should have received only a suspension. Others feel that it wasn't that offense alone, but "a pattern of recklessness."

Plagiarism is certainly an offense for which newspaper reporters, who understand its nature well, should be punished. Still, I need a little more information to determine the nature of Olesker's offense. Was this lapse of attribution just done a few times, and so should receive a punishment less than firing? Or was it "a pattern of recklessness"? One troubling factor is that if there was such a pattern, then why did he not receive more than a "warning" after a second or third offense? Why did the newspaper jump from a single warning to a drastic firing? But that's more on the appropriateness of the penalty not on the plagiarism itself. This article should be a good one to use in my composition classes.