Startup Idea: Automated Plagiarism and Replication Checker for Editorial Letters

Startup idea to develop a software application that provides real-time plagiarism and replication alerts for editorial letters received at news organizations. The solution would scan the letters' content and alert editors if it matches contents previously published elsewhere, improving the uniqueness and quality of the editorial section.

I am a journalist with a newspaper, and sometimes I help out with the editorial section of the paper. One of our biggest problems is letters to the editor, where some people send out mass letters to all sorts of papers around the country. We don't want to print one of those because we want letters that are unique to us. We do have a plagiarism scanner in the program we use to upload those letters, but it doesn't often inform us until it's too late that it's too similar to something else sent out to other papers. So far, our tactic is to take a chunk of that text and google it if we suspect it's one of those mass letters.

It would be nice if we had a site or program where we could get a more efficient head's up or notification if it notices that what's in this email or letter has been plagiarized or published elsewhere. It could also be useful to double-check quotes to make sure they're accurate.