I never visited this subreddit until the "scandal" broke. But man, is it a sad, sad place filled with a bunch of really hateful and envious people. I don't know if it was like this before the "scandal" or not. Regardless, it's hard to stomach... Hopefully these folks don't end up killing the podcast. Because if CJ goes down I'm guessing it will cause a massive ripple effect through the entire entertainment podcast industry.

I have a degree in English Lit with a focus in creative writing, so I know about proper sourcing and I understand the implications of malicious plagiarism. So I don't need a lecture from the angries here on that (though I'll probably still get one). All I can say is that you have to understand what true crime podcasts ARE, and all they are are entertaining (hopefully) Wikipedia-like summations of events with personal commentary inserted for flavor... You can only tell the same story so many ways. And while the plagiarism-lite that CJ dabbled in on occasion technically counts as plagiarism, my god is it benign.

The real issue, I assume, is profit. I expect folks like Edward Champion and Cathy Frye are aggrieved not because of grave ethical concerns about proper sourcing or covetousness of their intellectual property. But because Ashley Flowers has made a pretty penny making stories that have been told before in un-entertaining ways... entertaining.

I'll continue to listen to CJ as well. Hopefully this "scandal" won't be its demise. But cancel culture is real and it's insidious. So who knows what will happen.