When a reporter gets called out for doing something questionable, such as eWeek senior editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols running Novell press releases as his articles, there's usually at least the appearance of concern at the publication. You know: Whoops, sorry for the misunderstanding. But eWeek has let Vaughan-Nichols dismiss complaints as some sort of grudge by another writer who posted a dozen or so examples of directly cut-and-pasted paragraphs. Grudge or no, what I see is eWeek — whose 400,000-plus readers include a lot of senior tech people I hang out with — publishing statements written by Novell publicists in a way that makes them look like eWeek's independent findings and analysis to me. Vaughan-Nichols claims it's OK: "Like all reporters, I write stories based on press releases." Like all reporters? I'll send a $100 iTunes gift certificate to the first reporter besides Vaughan-Nichols who posts 3 links in the comments to his or her own work, each of which contains at least one paragraph provably lifted without attribution from a press release, to which you must also point. Or heck, just email 3 links to paul@valleywag.com and I'll post 'em for you.

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