Was this article plagiarized? GOOGLE IT!

First of all, no; this article was not plagiarized.
Referring to the first article:
Sidenote: what exactly is a PRE-journalism student? You learn to theoretically maybe one day write something? Anyway... a columnist stole quotes from a PRE-journalism student's article for a school paper. First of all... what was this reporter thinking? Stealing from a student of all people? But nonetheless, if you don't get the quote, you can't act like you did. That's called logic. This guy lost his column after the incident -- which on one side is a shame because I'm sure he was a fine writer. And on the other side shows that an entire house of cards can fall in the matter of writing one sentence. (Oh God how I hope nobody ever wrote that before.)
According to the school, "Two issues are at stake: Whether the use of uncredited quotes is plagiarism, and whether the punishment -- public disclosure and cancellation of the column -- fit the transgression, a transgression Merrill called 'unintentional plagiarism.'" (see how I quoted that?)
So... 1- Can a reporter use another source's quotes without citing them? And 2- If someone who makes that mistake should get fired. First of all, I think that the simple "according to..." could have fixed this whole thing. I think as long as you attribute those quotes to where you found them, no problem. And no I definitely don't think a good writer should have lost his job over it, but punishment or probation was probably in order.
After all, isn't all news copied from another source anyway? "Hey I think I read that in the NY Times..." Yes. You probably did.

Referring to the second article:
"Careless" is questionable. Was John Merrill "careless" in forgetting to put the source of his quotes? Or did he simply just not say the source of his quotes? If he really did forget to tag that on to the sentence, then two things happened. Firstly, he wrote it in a hurry. Secondly, he never checked it over at all. Because any good reporter knows that you check your facts. However, the latter option is more logical to me. He knew that his "source" was an 18-year-old girl, and to attribute that would make him look bad. My solution: don't use the quotes. If you know they're not yours and you're not admitting your source, leave them out. It;s better to have an incomplete article than to lose your job.
In his defense, he is right in saying that the whole fiasco made him look bad. It did. Also, I agree with the "technical, not unethical" spin he puts to it. Though he clearly just wants his job back, this is a good point. He never meant to steal anyone else's words. He just made a technical error.
I must say, though, I cannot wait for his "book on plagiarism." It'll probably be great... if he writes any of it himself. (HEY OHH!)

Referring to the third article:
There are sure a lot of places to find politics information. How much does someone want to throw down that they all say the same thing????
p.s. one of them is called "Whack-a-Pol" -- HA!