In a recent Reuters column, Jack Shafer mentioned that allegation. Gladwell, in the comments section, offered his response to the allegation:

In 2006, I quoted a line from William Goldman about how no one knows anything in Hollywood. In Imagine, Jonah Lehrer quotes the same line. This is not surprising, since Goldman’s comment is one of the most famous things ever written about Hollywood and has been quoted, by journalists, probably hundreds of times since it was written. If Lehrer is plagiarizing me, by quoting the same quote I quoted, then I am plagiarizing the person who used that quote before me, and that person is plagiarizing the person who quoted it before them, and so on and so forth, and we have a daisy chain of “plagiarizing” going back forty years and plagiarism, as a ethical concept, has ceased to mean anything at all.

By the way, if I run across the same absurd allegation anywhere else, I intend to reproduce my comment verbatim. Why? Because I thought about what I wanted to say, I’m comfortable with the way I said it, and I see no reason to tinker with my own language for the sake of tinkering with my own language.

Does Gladwell have a point? In a journalistic era where many writers augment their income with speaking gigs, are writers more responsible for ideas than the exact words that articulate them?

Male news executives like to think we have become more enlightened over the years as we made decisions about who should cover wars and who was not suited and should stay at home.

As I made judgments, as head of Newsgathering at the BBC and then president and managing director of CNN International, about whom to assign to the hellholes around the globe, the gender of a war correspondent was always under the surface. Was the story suitable for a woman? Would she prove a distraction? Was her hair too long or too blonde? Did her flak jacket fit? Crucially: Was she at greater risk of harassment, sexual assault and rape than her male colleagues?

My fears went mostly unspoken — particularly as most of the women working for me were too feisty to be challenged!

Last month’s apparently targeted death in Syria of veteran war correspondent Marie Colvin of Britain’s Sunday Times was a tragic reminder that our female colleagues share the risks with many in this profession. Another searing example of the very special risks that women face came in February last year in Cairo with the appalling sexual attack on Lara Logan from CBS News. This week she describes that attack in a new book from the International News Safety Institute, No Woman’s Land: On the Frontlines with Female Reporters. She joins 40 other media women in graphically describing the special additional risks they’ve faced over the years — and they offer their advice on how to prepare for that and how to continue to do their jobs.

Lara Logan’s account of her ordeal at the hands of “300 baying men” tackles for probably the first time the taboo subject of what can happen to female journalists just about anywhere, but more so in the middle of a frenzied mob as law and order breaks down.

“I remember begging for my life,” she says. “I remember giving up. I remember fighting back. I remember accepting my death. And I remember clearly, making a decision to go down fighting with my last breath.”

Another distinguished female war correspondent, the BBC’s Lyse Doucet, believes that in most places she works, Western women are regarded almost as a “third gender,” not like men, not like local women. In traditional societies particularly they are granted the special privileges given to guests and accorded the protection women are believed to need — as happened with the many Egyptian men in Cairo who linked their arms and escorted Doucet through rowdy crowds. That was in sharp contrast to what happened to Lara Logan in the same city around the same time.

Logan writes in the book about the “ancient tactic of terrifying people into submission or silence … [though] I do not believe it should stop or deter women from doing this kind of work.”

She reminds us that “sexual violence — rape — is a unique, humiliating weapon. It is used to great effect against both men and women.”

This book is the first that addresses the welfare of media women who work in hostile zones and is a powerful story about journalistic passion and the extra dangers that women are prepared to face.

It is also a strident reminder that female journalists have a different take on war and conflict. Unlike many of their male counterparts, they are unimpressed by the whiz-bang of war, the so-called precision weapons. They know far too well that “collateral damage” means men, women and frequently children. I believe that understanding makes them better journalists.

PHOTO: Journalist Marie Colvin poses for a photograph with Libyan rebels (unseen) in Misrata, June 4, 2011. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra

Credit: REUTERS/Stephen Culp

More than 18 years have passed since my first encounter with Ratko Mladic but I still see him standing there, an intense, angry look in his eyes.  He clasped his hands together and squeezed them more and more tightly until his fingers turned red and his knuckles went white.

I had asked the Bosnian Serb commander about the siege his forces had laid to the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica.  The massacre there, the worst of the many atrocities perpetrated against Bosnian Muslims by Mladic’s army, was still two years away but this was his way of demonstrating that there would be no escape for its inhabitants.

That gesture by Mladic, arrested in Serbia on Thursday after 16 years on the run from charges of genocide in the Bosnian war, spoke more about his ruthlessness and obsession than any of the words he uttered during an interview that lasted for more than two hours.

Mladic, a former Yugoslav Army officer, was a familiar face to reporters covering the war in Bosnia, but few journalists got to spend time with him.  I had the opportunity to pass an evening alone with him and a Reuters colleague from Belgrade at the Bosnian Serb headquarters in Pale, outside Sarajevo, in May 1993.

Arrogant and dismissive of the United Nations and the international mediators trying to end the war, Mladic was at the height of his powers.  Serb forces were in control of 70 percent of Bosnian territory, the capital Sarajevo was at the mercy of his heavy artillery, and Mladic was breathing fire.

The World Trade Center in New York had been bombed in February 1993 and, recalling that attack, Mladic threatened to bomb London and Washington if U.N. troops tried to intervene.  “One furious Serb can do a lot of damage with just one match,” he said matter-of-factly, almost slipping in the remark as an aside.

That threat –an indication of Mladic’s exaggerated sense of power as much as anything else – gave me my story for the day but what fascinated me far more was Mladic the man.  Over the course of our discussion, his mood shifted back and forth from angry, belligerent and animated to humorous, charming and pensive.

We sat across a long table trading cigarettes and sipping plum brandy.  Whenever he got excited, Mladic would stand and strut around the room.  At one point, to illustrate his insistence that he really did not like weapons, he strode over to me, un-zippered his camouflage coat and slapped his hips, inviting me to see for myself that he was not armed.

A LONELY CHILDHOOD

He had really wanted to be a surgeon, not a military officer, he declared, and he would have made a super surgeon “but I’d never make a Frank Sinatra because I don’t have a super voice.”

As the formality of our exchanges about military and diplomatic developments wore off, we got to talking about Mladic’s childhood.

Mladic ‘s father was killed in 1945 leading an attack by Josip Broz Tito’s partisans against the home village of Ante Pavelic, the World War Two leader of the Croatian Ustasha fascist state.  Mladic was two at the time and his widowed mother later sent him off to boarding school in Belgrade.

As he reminisced, it became clear that Mladic was obsessively devoted to the women blood relatives in his life.  He kept returning our conversation to his mother, his sister and his daughter Ana, a medical student in Belgrade.  I cannot recall him talking about his son, Darko, or his wife, Bosiljka.

Ana would kill herself the following year with her father’s favorite pistol.  Reports at the time said she could not come to terms with evidence that he was a butcher.

I left our meeting convinced I had met a psychopath, a man without a conscience but a charmer as long as you stayed on the right side of him.

We ran into each other several more times over the course of 1993.  On each occasion, Mladic would throw me a wave or shake my hand.  Then, the final time we met, in August that year, he winked at me with a big grin on his face, as if to let me in on the joke he had decided to play on the United Nations.

Mladic had just completed the encirclement of Sarajevo with the capture of the Muslim-led Bosnian army’s only supply route into the capital. This was his chance to show off his conquests to the commander of U.N. Forces, Belgian General Francis Briquemont.

Briquemont had to ride up Mount Bjelasnica in an armored car to survey the scene.  Mladic stood at the summit, binoculars around his neck and a Gazelle helicopter in the background to drive home his point that a U.N. no-fly ban was not worth the paper it was written on.  Briquemont was not amused.  Mladic, typically, did not care.

Photo: Former Bosnian Serb army commander and top war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic is seen on Mountain Vlasic in this April 1995 file photo. REUTERS/Ranko Cukovic/Files

By Chris Taylor

“You weren’t on that Cathay Pacific flight, were you?”

People have been asking me this question with a unique mix of sympathy and outright horror. And the answer is yes. The one that idled for 11 hours on the tarmac of New York’s JFK Airport, as we waited in vain for a gate. With two kids crawling over me, ages 2 and 5.

Yes, I was on that flight. And this is what it was like.

It was actually our second time boarding Flight 888, since the previous day, we’d been delayed until 1 a.m. and then sat on the Vancouver tarmac for three hours, until they finally sent us away at around 4 a.m. because of the blizzard in New York City. Frustrating, sure. But still within the bounds of human normalcy.

It was only the next day that things spun out into some kind of sadistic psychological experiment. My wife likened the experience to having slipped into Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone. But I saw more of Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit, the existential classic where mismatched strangers are thrown together for eternity in a tightly enclosed space. As he wrote, “Hell is other people.”

We landed a little after 2 a.m. Tuesday, following another three hours on the Vancouver tarmac and another five hours in the air. I’m unlikely to ever forget the pilot’s pronouncements that followed. They reminded me of a Stephen King cover blurb for the bestselling book The Hot Zone, about a breakout of the killer Ebola virus. King said the first chapter was the most horrifying thing he had ever read – and then it kept getting worse. In our case, each time the pilot’s voice came over the intercom, things kept getting worse.

Firstly, we were informed there was no gate to receive us. Oh, and he added casually, a previous plane had waited seven hours. Passengers looked at each other to check their hearing; he couldn’t have elicited a more chilling reaction if he had announced he had just chopped up his co-pilot and eaten him with a nice Chianti.

A mother of a young child in the row behind me looked as if she had just been stabbed in the neck. Seven hours? That can’t be right.

In retrospect, I would have taken seven hours in a heartbeat.

Over the ensuing 11 hours, various rationales were tossed out. A missing British Airways crew, a lack of customs officials – two for 1,500 travelers, it was said — and another aircraft that butted in line. Each time it was a couple of hours here, another couple of hours there. Soon it was morning. Then it was lunchtime.

We were able to look outside at the snowy ground, but couldn’t get to it. It was like the Greek myth of Tantalus, but with blankets and headsets.

Passengers were remarkably calm, perhaps because the aircraft was filled with mild-mannered Canadians. My wife, a fine lass of Haitian descent, claims that a planeload of trapped Haitians – a culture much more accustomed to fighting for their lives, every single day – would have resulted in different headlines. They would have likely commandeered the cockpit, secured a catered breakfast, and personally guided the plane down Flatbush Avenue by sunup.

But we Canadians sat meekly, nibbled our onion crackers, and waited for news. And waited.

As for my children, the gods took pity on us. Today’s kids are an entitled generation that expects on-demand Spongebob episodes, a Wii console permanently within reach, and a permanent supply of freshly-made pancakes with real maple syrup. On Flight 888, it goes without saying, we had none of those things.

But by some alchemy, my kids were replaced with children I didn’t recognize. They slept sweetly most of the way; the elder ate Petit Ecolier chocolate biscuits and played Angry Birds, while the younger was content to tour the plane and play in a makeshift daycare in the back, where other harried parents had gathered. It was a Christmas miracle.

As for the flight staff, they left in the kitchen, buffet-style, a modest wicker basket of crackers and peanuts, along with some open cartons of apple juice. Then they pulled off a neat magic trick: Most of them simply disappeared. I don’t know if they all gravitated into first class, or if there’s a secret hatch to a luxury employee lounge, but many of them just vanished. Can’t say that I blame them, since they were going on a couple of hours of sleep themselves, and were tasked with dealing with hundreds of passengers with no resources.

At one point I asked a flight attendant if she had ever been through anything like this, in her entire career in the air. Her response: “Never.” At a certain point she even developed fear in her eyes, as if she was concerned we were going to rise up and roast her limbs for brunch.

The punchline: When we finally deplaned on Tuesday afternoon, in a different terminal and without a single Cathay staffer to receive us, customs officials told us we couldn’t leave the area without our bags. Which, since the airline didn’t have any baggage handlers, meant perhaps another couple of days sleeping on benches in the airport terminal.

Faced with an armed insurrection — and the “extenuating circumstances,” as one kindly guard put it – security decided to let us out of JFK Airport. With no bags, and psychologically debilitated, but at least with our freedom. In the taxi line, we all looked around and squinted as if we’d just been released from the hole on Rikers Island.

I’m not sure how much longer we all would have lasted, fresh out of baby milk and patience. But if there’s an enduring moral to Cathay Pacific Flight 888, it’s this: Whatever life throws at you, you plaster a smile on your face and keep moving. Or not moving, as the case may be.

Chris Taylor is an award-winning freelance writer in New York City. He can be reached at christaylornyc@yahoo.com.

– This original story by R.L. Stine was written for Reuters.com. R.L.’s books are read all over the world. So far, he has sold over 350 million books, making him one of the best-selling children’s authors in history. –

Shivering in the hall, I looked forward to the warmth of the radio studio.  I felt the cold as if it was trapped inside my overcoat. The frosted glass of the door looked like snow to me. I pushed it open with one gloved hand.

Here I am, everyone. Emerson Grant, the veteran and revered news anchor. Yes, it’s Christmas Eve, and the dinosaur has arrived to give his annual review of the news.

As if anyone cared. The news this year was all bad. Banks failing… war everywhere… folks living in their cars. Why would people tune in to hear a summary of all their sadnesses?

I gazed around the outer office. Anyone here? The dim ceiling lights made everything gray, as if behind a curtain. No one at the reception desk. No one at the other desks.

I know it’s Christmas Eve, people, but I can’t do this alone.

I shoved open the studio door and stepped inside. The same gray light, like a faded photograph. No sign of anyone. I glanced at the clock. It had stopped, the second hand stuck on three. I felt a stir of uneasiness. Strange.

I stepped over to the console and dropped into the worn chair. I tugged the mike lower and reached for the headphones. I can’t work this board. I need an engineer.

Without warning, darkness fell. Ceiling lights went black. The lights on the console vanished. I felt a pang. Just a heartbeat slightly off. I stared into the solid blackness. And heard a soft thump. My neck muscles went rigid. My ears rang. Another thump. From nearby. I wasn’t alone.

Who’s there? Who is it? No reply.

I know you’re in here. Fear choked my throat. I fumbled for the phone. My hand bumped the receiver. I grabbed it and raised it to my ears. Before I could push 911, I heard voices. Several voices all jabbering at once. Pardon me. What language are you speaking? I have an emergency here. Can anyone hear me? They kept chattering. They didn’t hear.

The lights flickered back. So dim, the studio seemed to be made of billowing shadow. At least now I could escape from the intruder. I jumped to my feet, stumbled to the outer office and rushed to the exit door. I tugged the brass handle. Frantically tried again. Then I tried pushing it. Locked in. Trapped.

I took a deep breath and held it. I’m not allowed to get excited, ever since the heart attack a few years ago. But I couldn’t hold my fear down. I was locked in, with the lights flickering and an intruder in the studio.

I spun around-and there he stood. A boy. Curly brown hair and a stub of a nose. A red-and-blue striped sweatshirt and baggy brown pants.

“Get out,” I snarled. “You don’t belong here. Did you come here to rob me?”

He shook his head. Lowered his gaze, and the curly hair fell over his eyes.

“I just want to watch you,” he said. “I want to be a great newsman, too. I dream about it.”

“Go away,” I told him. “Change your dreams.”

“I want to be on the radio,” he said. “Like you.” He tugged my sleeve.

I brushed him away. “Go home and play video games. You’ll be better off.”

He squinted at me. “Video games? What are they?”

“Are you trying to trick an old man?” I shouted. “What’s your name?”

He didn’t answer. Something in his face broke through my bitterness. The eagerness. A certain light. His face… MY face! I recognized the boy. To my shock, I knew I was staring at myself.

Suddenly, I remembered a cold, snowy Christmas Eve… a bitter, old news reader in a tiny studio. I sneaked in to visit him. I was so eager. I still had the light in my eyes. All those years ago, did I visit myself? Or did I dream it?

Gazing at myself, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t even blink my eyes.

He grabbed my arm. “It’s time for you to do your show,” he said. He pulled me into the studio. I stopped in front of a silvery wall plaque. New to me. I drew close to read the etched words:

THE EMERSON GRANT STUDIO

In Memory Of Emerson Grant 1936-2010.

The cold horror of the words-of course I knew what they meant. I felt like a ghost, already sinking… sinking into the cold shadows. But the boy watched me so eagerly. I couldn’t let him down.

I sat down at the console and pulled the headphones over my ears. I leaned toward the mike and flipped the switch. And I began to read the news.

R.L. Stine’s ‘The Haunting Hour’ premieres on the new television network The Hub on December 25 at 8:00 pm. R.L. Stine’s first Christmas special is followed by “The Dead Body” at 8:30 pm and the series airs new episodes every Saturday night at 8:30 pm after an encore of the previous week’s episode at 8:00 pm on The Hub.

Devin Wenig is CEO, Thomson Reuters Markets

Much of the last few years have been spent discussing how journalism will survive in the face of the immense changes taking place in the industry.  The digital revolution, the shift in advertising-based business models and the explosion of content sources has turned the consuming, dissemination and publishing of news on its head.

But the debate has shifted from will it survive to how will it survive?  How will media organizations deliver value while adapting to consumers’ new demands and capabilities, which will only continue to change?

Blaming Google for disrupting the advertising market or waiting for the iPad to replicate offline content are not strategies. Overcapacity and commoditization are not the most popular industry topics to discuss. But look at any news aggregation site and the thousands of stories about any given current event that have little or no differentiation and it’s self evident. When local markets were walled off and self sustainable, there was room for this level of duplication. In the age of information ubiquity, there is not.

News organizations need a horizontal platform. They need a broad, fast and fact-based news capability. The only economic model that makes sense is a shared industry capability. However, no single news provider can provide all the requirements in a rapidly shifting and dynamic market for current awareness.

Thomson Reuters is investing heavily in news.  We believe that our history, brand and broad capability give us an excellent starting position to build that industry platform.  We will supplement our unique offering with investments such as the one announced today to support our U.S. and global media business with deep U.S. content.  Additionally, because we know that we will never be able to satisfy all of the industry’s needs, we’ll also provide a platform so that sources can monetize their news and content through our distribution channels. That marriage will make the industry more efficient while freeing up journalists to focus on really adding value for their customers.

Where is that value? In vertical content and in true digital innovation. Vertical, valuable journalism is ultimately about expertise and about connecting the dots. It can be based on an editorial voice, a point of view or a set of common interests. While profit pools have been eroded in general news, they have gathered in vertical markets such as corporate industry news and deep expertise in topics of interest such as sports, politics, weather and many other niches.  Editors in these verticals generally have a distinct editorial voice and deep connection to the producers and the consumers of newsflow. When journalism at this level really connects, it can reflect or even create a “virtual community.” For Thomson Reuters, vertical content means the world’s deepest, fastest and most relevant news for professionals. Our editorial goal is to be indispensable to our customers.

High-value added journalism is critical, but technology and content are now inseparable, if they ever were.  The ability to create utility, collaborate, moderate and build exciting shared-user experiences has never been greater. It means recognizing that the expectations of individuals who have grown up in the age of search, multimedia, and mobility are just different. There is no single model of innovation and no magic formula. But it’s clear that experiences based only on linear text will be a challenge for media organizations looking to meaningfully connect with media consumers. Great journalism still matters and is as valued as it has ever been, but that alone is not the end of the discussion. Returns will accrue to those who rethink the user experience rather than replicate it. Thomson Reuters is investing heavily in its product line and has launched major new innovations this year to create intuitive, engaging and adaptable services which push the limits of interaction with news and information.

In a media world moving as fast as the present one, it’s easy to get caught up in the flavor of the day.  But playing the long game in news is the best way to sustain valuable journalism and create a viable business model that resonates and adds value to consumers.

JANUARY: Apple ready for big device debut

The launch of Apple’s iPad was a highly anticipated event and it propelled this preview video to the most popular for January.

FEBRUARY: Luge crash death overshadows Games

The Vancouver Winter Olympic Games began with tragedy after Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed while on a training run. The horrific circumstances of the crash and what this meant for the upcoming Games kept viewers clicking on this video.

MARCH: A monorail that gets you pedaling

Weird and wonderful technological advancements are guaranteed to peak reader attention and this pedal-powered vehicle was no exception.

APRIL: Reuters Thai riot video released

Reuters cameraman Hiro Muramoto was tragically killed during violent riots in Thailand. Seven minutes of film taken by Muramoto illustrated how the scrappy street protest turned deadly on a balmy Bangkok night.

MAY: Spanish bullfighter gored

Bullfighting, while often controversial, makes for compelling video footage as the drama is played out in the bullring. Perhaps the bull’s triumph against the bullfighter is what kept viewers watching this video?

JUNE: U.S. woman sets world’s fattest goal

In a culture that promotes weight-loss through popular culture phenomenons such as the “Biggest Loser”, this New Jersey woman’s attempt to be the world’s fattest woman at 1,000 pounds intrigued viewers.

JULY: Bank for India’s sex workers

The old adage of adding sex to a headline to catch people’s attention, certainly is true for this video that was released in 2007 but saw a resurgence of traffic this year.

AUGUST: Bloody end to Manila hostage drama

When a former policeman took a group of tourists hostage in Manila, the bungled police operation to rescue them played out on TV screens across the globe.

SEPTEMBER: Soros: Gold “not safe”

Whatever billionaire investor George Soros says is golden as this popular clip of his interview with Reuters Global Editor at large Chrystia Freeland shows.

OCTOBER: Red faces over top model gaffe

The excruciating moment when an Australian top model host realizes she has announced the wrong winner of the contest made for great TV and got our readers sharing this embarrassing video.

NOVEMBER: Bejeweled bra exposed in NY

The reasons behind the success of this video leave little to the imagination, as does the lingerie it exposes…