Rodale, publisher of Men's Health and employer of serial plagiarist David Zinczenko, explains why ripping writers' bylines off their work, and slapping Zinczenko's on, is OK: "The byline doesn't take credit for the work, but serves as an overarching tag."

After reading our story earlier about how Zinczenko routinely takes Men's Health articles by other people, removes their bylines, adds his, and then publishes the resulting article in his "Eat This, Not That" column for Yahoo! Health, a spokesperson for Men's Health parent company Rodale explained:

Rodale owns all rights to the majority of the content that appears in Men's Health, Women's Health, Eat This, Not That! and other branded products. Our editors use that content to promote Rodale and its various properties across all media. As the editor for the Men's Health brand, it's Dave's job to promote the magazine and its extensions. The byline doesn't take credit for the work, but serves as an overarching tag used in conjunction with the logo to indicate that the material has been written, assigned or edited by the brand (i.e. Dave and his team) at some point. That is why the Men's Health logo appears on this particular blog. Much of Dave's work is original for this blog, but in addition to generating new content, Dave—and many editors in general—also edit existing content that the company owns to connect with readers. A number of the articles you cite that simply carry the Men's Health byline are indeed stories by Dave that he wrote for his books that were then adapted by Men's Health staffers to later appear in the magazine.

Silly us, and our literal definition of "by." Clearly we lack the synergistic minds necessary to understand this new model of 21st century journalism.

Previously:

Men's Health Editor Plagiarizes His Own Writers

[Photo of Zinczenko, with pal Dan Abrams (left) and chef John DeLucie (center) via Getty]