STANDARDS ARE SHIFTING: The New York Times has long been known for lifting stories from smaller papers. But in the wake of the Blair scandals, it’s news:

John Sutter, publisher of the Villager, says the New York Times has been stealing story ideas from his small Greenwich Village paper. There’s no hint of plagiarism here; in each case, Times staffers did their own reporting and filed stories that read very differently. And it’s hardly unusual for big-city papers, including The Washington Post, to follow up on reports in smaller community papers.

But in this case there appears to be a pattern of lifting ideas without credit.

Sutter cited 32 articles over the last three years on subjects that appeared first in the Villager. In 11 cases, one or more people quoted by the Villager are also quoted in the subsequent Times piece.

Now that this sort of thing is easier to check and to point out, I suspect that smaller papers will be more insistent on credit.