The Sunlight Foundation  released a new "journalistic accountability" tool today, wryly named "Churnalism". It tells you if an author was "churning" out somebody else's material by checking journalistic text against a database of press releases. To the dismay of plagiarists and lazy reporters alike, it even checks against Wikipedia.

The site provides a few examples. Enter this story from CBS News, for instance, about a mother who found the chemical BPA was linked to her son’s thyroid problems, and churnalism will provide you this press release that that the CBS article sources, and highlights the portions of text ...

IRE is gaining a new summer fellow as part of the first ever Google Journalism Fellowship. Nicole Pasulka of New York University will spend 8 weeks with IRE, as well as a week with Google and a week with the Knight Foundation.

Pasulka is currently getting an M.A. in journalism at NYU in the Literary Reportage program. She has five years of experience in journalism working as a freelancer, an editor for The Morning News, and a fellow at Mother Jones. Last summer she received the 2012 I.F. Stone Award from the Nation Institute and a 2012 grant ...