Earlier in the week, the New York Post published a short piece entitled "Yankees Pinch-Hit for NYU"about the university's plan to hold graduation ceremonies at Yankee Stadium, and the anxiety that decision has caused some students who root for the Mets and Red Sox. A harmless, amusing piece of filler for the paper. Just a day earlier, however, NYU's campus newspaper, Washington Square News ran a very similar article on the same subject called, "Sox, Mets fans irked about grad spot."

While this certainly isn't the first time that a paper has poached a piece from a local competitor, it is interesting that the next day a reporter for the Post thanked a WSN staffer for the idea. According to the WSN article's author and campus editor Kate Thuma (full disclosure: a classmate of mine at NYU), "A WSN reporter was at an NYU event last night and ran into a New York Post reporter there. The Post reporter mentioned my article to my reporter, and told her to thank me." Thuma isn't too concerned about being copied. "It's fine that they used the idea," she tells Gelf. "I'm actually pretty flattered that they thought it was a good story. It would have been nice if they'd attributed the idea to WSN, though, since we reported on it first."