CALIopolis

Here is another in a series of interviews with law faculty who participated in the Legal Education Podcasting Project.

Professor Charles Shafer of the University of Baltimore School of Law created weekly summaries for his evening division Torts class.

This podcast is 29 minutes long.

Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - CharlesShafer.mp3

Two articles crossed my path today and I would like to juxtapose two clips. The first is from the New York Times titled "Schoolbooks Are Given F’s in Originality" by Diana Jean Schemo. Here's the quote...

"...William Cronon, a historian at the University of Wisconsin who wrote the American Historical Association’s statement on ethics, said textbooks were usually corporate-driven collaborative efforts, in which the publisher had extensive rights to hire additional writers, researchers and editors and to make major revisions without the authors’ final approval. The books typically synthesize hundreds of works without using footnotes to credit sources..."

Contrast this with the following clip from a Washington Post article titled "Death by Wikipedia: The Kenneth Lay Chronicles" by Frank Ahrens...

"...Unlike, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia has no formal peer review for its articles. They may be written by experts or insane crazy people. Or worse, insane crazy people with an agenda. And Internet access..."

The Times article bashes textbook publishers for being a little fast and loose with attribution and using a little too much market-think in their promotion of authors or scholars as "brands".

The Wapo article bashes Wikipedia for not being peer-reviewed, but he contradicts himself by giving evidence of peer-review that resulted in the construction of the Ken Lay Death article.

In short, both the textbook publishers and Wikipedia are accused of having an agenda that is not fully disclosed and so is unethical. In the case of textbook publishers, they have the intellectual property rights to do so which isn't an excuse, but reduces the Times piece to exposure of a "dirty little secret".

Wikipedia needs no defense. It's editorial system worked as advertised. A breaking story was created and updated dozens of times as new information and new editors came online to make contributions. That's how Wikipedia works. The Wapo columnist doesn't get it.

In my opinion Wikipedia comes out looking a lot better than the textbook publishers. They aren't hiding anything and they aren't marketing dead scholars as a "brand". The Wikipedians strove to get the story right. The textbook publishers strove to make more sales and perhaps secondarily, serve education. I am well along the path of thinking that commercial publishers cannot be trusted with the responsibility of serving education. It appears to be antithical to and unreconcilable with making a profit.

Tell me I am wrong.