I have worked in media and newspapers for most of my career, including at large metropolitan dailies like the Baltimore Sun.
I’ve had the immense privilege of working alongside Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters and editors like John Carroll of the Los Angeles Times and Bill Marimow of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The most important lesson I took from the early days of my career from those colleagues is that newspapers have only one commodity: credibility.
When that’s gone, there’s nothing. That’s the reason plagiarism is considered the cardinal sin of the profession; it casts doubt on everything a writer has produced before.