(AP) LONG BEACH, Calif. A former California State-Long Beach instructor will no longer write a weekly column for a Columbia, Mo., newspaper after admitting to plagiarizing material from a student reporter. John Merrill, now a University of Missouri-Columbia journalism professor, wrote a Sunday column for the Columbia Missourian, a community newspaper affiliated with the school.
But his Nov. 4 column about Missouri's women's and gender studies program used three quotes and other phrases taken from an Oct. 5 article in The Maneater, an independent student newspaper. Merrill is a former director of the Louisiana State University journalism school and has also taught at Northwestern State, Texas A&M, Maryland, Virginia, and the University of North Carolina, in addition to Cal State-Long Beach. In a letter to Missourian editors, Merrill apologized for what he called "unintentional plagiarism."
But his Nov. 4 column about Missouri's women's and gender studies program used three quotes and other phrases taken from an Oct. 5 article in The Maneater, an independent student newspaper. Merrill is a former director of the Louisiana State University journalism school and has also taught at Northwestern State, Texas A&M, Maryland, Virginia, and the University of North Carolina, in addition to Cal State-Long Beach. In a letter to Missourian editors, Merrill apologized for what he called "unintentional plagiarism."
