If that's all the re-writting you're going to do why don't you just re-post the press release?

A few minutes ago I noticed an Ottawa Citizen article about an Russell Peters' upcoming appearance in Ottawa.

Not surprisingly, it was noted that the quotes attributed to Peters' came from the press release.  The rest of the 'article' doesn't appear to be so upfront about its origins.

I was a little bit surprised to see that the 'article' mentioned that

The tour will feature ... video cameras and screens for an up-close and intimate show that will capture his signature audience improv in an arena setting.

Did a newspaper article really just include a passage about a modern stadium show having video cameras and screens?  Is the author assuming that the audience hasn't seen such a show in 20 years?

And what about that part about "his signature audience improve," is that the kind of phrasing that would normally appear in a newspaper article about an upcoming show?

Anyway, a few of the passages in the article caught my attention.  They just didn't read like an article - they read like a news release.  In the end I thought I should try to find the news release mentioned in the article and compare it to the Citizen's article.  Turns out they are pretty similar.

Here's a pretty good example of the copy-paste journalism employed in this instance.

As the article puts it:

Peters has given away more than $1 million over the past several years to various charities, from the Brampton Civic Hospital to Heart House Hospice, Gilda’s Club, the MS Society and a scholarship at his former high school (The Russell Peters North Peel Scholarship) to send a deserving student to college. The scholarship is now in its third year.

And as it appears in the original press release:

Peters has given away more than a million dollars over the past several years to various charities, from the Brampton Civic Hospital, to Heart House Hospice, Gilda's Club, the MS Society and a scholarship at his old high-school, TheRussell Peters North Peel Scholarship to send a deserving student to college.  The scholarship is now in its third year.

Similarities like these can be found throughout the article.  Paragraph after paragraph has been basically lifted from the press release.

There are a few aspects of this practice that I don't understand.  First of all, isn't this basically copyright infringement?  If it isn't, does it mean that I could I re-write the Harry Potter books as the Larry Sotter books and sell them for $5 less and make billions? Or maybe just remove all of the Oxford comas?

Secondly, isn't there something of a moral issue here.  The newspaper is presenting the content as though it is a piece of journalism.  I'm sure media studies types have a better way of framing the issue, but to represent something as journalistic output that is really nothing more than a modified press release seems, at the bare minimum, a little misleading.

Thirdly, isn't this just hugely inefficient?  If the paper thinks that the press release content is valuable, but not valuable for independent reporting, why not just re-post the original press release as a press release of interest?  Why spend the time and money to hire someone to make a few minor stylistic changes that can't possibly be significant enough to eliminate any copyright-related issues?  In an era when newsroom cuts are rampant, this seems a particularly strange practice and an area ripe for modernization and reform.