Not-so-original sin

The New York Times has revealed cases of "substantial overlap" between reports by one of its business writers and stories in other news sources. Zachery Kouwe "reused language from The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and other sources without attribution or acknowledgment", the Times has acknowledged. It's not the first case of plagiarism at the distinguished paper, which has 1000 journalists and prides itself on its fact-checking. Reporter Jayson Blair resigned about seven years ago over what The Times called "widespread fabrication and plagiarism". Why do reporters and other writers who ought to know better simply lift copy from other sources without acknowledgement? Well, perhaps there's a clue in the behaviour of young German author Helene Hegemann who, according to Deutsche Welle, stands accused of lifting large passages of her book, Axolotl Roadkill, from several sources including another novel titled Strobo by an author known simply as Airen. In explaining herself to the newspaper Die Welt, 17-year-old Hegemann said: "I think there are good ethical grounds for giving sources for a book - and the fact that I neglected to do so reflects my thoughtlessness and my narcissism. But for me personally, it doesn’t matter at all where people get their material - what matters is what they do with it."
P.S. Many universities now use software that detects plagiarism. I wonder why newspapers and book publishers don't?
(As usual, my sources for this post are credited and/or hyperlinked.)