Suketu Mehta, journalism professor and Maximum City author, landed an exclusive interview with Raj Rajaratnam and wrote a compelling article for Newsweek on the former hedge fund titan who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for insider trading. Rajaratnam, of Sri Lankan origin, has some choice words for the Indian-American associates who betrayed him. But some readers might have choice words for Mehta, who suggests that Rajaratnam is not too different from other South Asian immigrants.

The whole story speaks to the South Asian–American community: its pursuit of success and money at any cost; the differences between immigrants and the first generation; and the immigrants’ incomplete understanding of the rigor of the law in the U.S. [Daily Beast]

Just in case you have an incomplete understanding of what he means, here it is again later in the article.

The Rajaratnam case can be seen as a metaphor of the difference between immigrants from South Asia, who have a more elastic view of rules and a more keenly developed art of networking, and their children, the first generation, schooled to play by American rules. [Daily Beast]

Elastic view of rules? For a moment there, I thought he was referring to the rules of journalism.

Journalists need to tread carefully when reporting certain stories, especially when a family tragedy is involved. They need to weigh the public’s need to know against the concerns of the family. And most of all, they need to be fair. Well, you can give the Associated Press a FAIL on their reporting of the deaths of Dr. Viswanathan Rajaraman and his wife, Dr. Mary Sundaram.

A small plane crashed into a cornfield and caught fire early Sunday, killing the parents of a former Harvard University student who lost a $500,000 book contract because parts of her first novel were copied from other works. [Link]

It’s been five years since Kaavya’s scandal and it seems unseemly to bring it up in the very first paragraph of an article that should have focused on the death of a brilliant and beloved neurosurgeon. In fact, I wonder if it’s necessary to mention it at all. Perhaps it is, but you can argue that the death of two doctors in a plane crash is newsworthy enough, without bringing up their daughter’s much-publicized but well-in-the-past literary sin. In any case, the Indo-Asian News Service seems to have handled the article better than the AP, even if they didn’t do much original reporting themselves.

Here are just a couple of comments about Dr. Rajaraman from a NewjerseyNewsroom.com article.

Dr. Raj was an awesome man… Very nice, friendly, smartest DR. I have ever had the pleasure to work with & for. I still dont want to believe this horrible news. Dr. Raj used to always come to my desk and ask me for Chocolate, and we used to laugh.. I will never, ever forget you… May you and your beautiful wife REST IN PEACE….. GONE BUT NEVER FORGOTTEN…. (Paola S)

The surgery Dr. Rajaraman performed on me changed my life. Such a kind man. I feel blessed to have met him. Such a loss to the world. My deepest condolences to the entire family. (D. Mariniello)

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Hello and welcome to another episode of Original Copy, the show that teaches you how to make your mark in the competitive world of journalism. Today we bring you a lesson on what to do if you’re caught lifting another writer’s work. As you may have heard, Aroon Purie, editor-in-chief of India Today, had to apologize for a recent “From the Editor-in-Chief” column that included lines like this: “If a tiger had sex with a tornado and then their tiger-nado baby got married to an earthquake, their offspring would be Rajinikanth.”

As it turns out, that sentence and nine others originally appeared in Slate writer Grady Hendrix’s article on Rajinikanth. Purie sent apologies to Hendrix and Slate editor David Plotz, which Hendrix included in a piece called “Great Writers Steal.”

It’s my normal practice in my letter from the editor to enumerate why we carry a particular cover story. In the regional edition of our weekly newsmagazine India Today issue dated Oct 18th 2010 we carried a cover story on the film star Rajinikant.

I normally ask for inputs on subjects that are specialized , as for instance a superhit filmstar from the south, from those in charge of editing the copy. Some of the inputs which were sent to me on Rajinikant were unfortunately taken from an article authored by Mr. G Hendrix in your magazine. This was not known to me. I believed it to be original copy and a portion of it got included as inputs in my longer letter from the editor which got published. I greatly regret this error.

Rajinikanth is indeed a very specialized subject, one that’s studied diligently at many Tamil Nadu theaters. So it’s no surprise that Purie asked for inputs, and believed them to be “original copy.”

Purie: “Original copy?”

Assistant: “Yes, sir, we are the first ones to copy it.”

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