I sent the following e-mail letter to Poynter Online's quasi-blog Romenesko. They're apparently not interested in publishing it.

Last Thursday, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert basically recycled a column he wrote in 1999 with a new top and a new bottom. The heart of the column nine paragraphs was practically the same. Whether or not it's truly plagiarism when you copy your own work, this still seems like an ethical no-no to me. (A simple solution would have been to simply write something along the lines of: As I wrote about in a column several years ago ...)

Is recycling your own work OK now?

Matthew Hoy
Metro page designer,
San Diego Union-Tribune

Apparently, the answer is "yes."