Reader Vincent Meyer recently contacted me to say we’d copied an Aviation Mentor web article published by John Ewing, titled “Flying in the Raw.”
Small World
Aviation is a small world; there are a limited number of topics on which one can write. Additionally, journalism is a specific enough trade that when you combine it with aviation, you have a very small world indeed. Thus, its inevitable that there occur certain overlaps and (gasp!) even certain duplications. Granted, this one innocently went too far, but just how many unique articles can be written about a single, odd approach without covering the same ground?
Key Takeaways:
- An IFR Magazine article by Jeff Van West was found to have a highly similar topic and identical title to a previously published piece by John Ewing.
- The magazine attributed the resemblance to Jeff inadvertently retaining an idea and catchy title after noting Ewing's original article, deeming it "not quite plagiarism, but uncomfortably close."
- The magazine apologized to John Ewing, who accepted and has agreed to write for them, illustrating the challenges of originality and the inevitability of topic overlap in niche fields like aviation journalism.
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