Attribution in the Internet Age: When Does ‘Repackaging’ Become Stealing?
The inherent tension between the old media and the new media boiled over the weekend when Ian Shapira wrote an insightful article for the Washington Post about how Gawker appropriated one of his stories. For people concerned with the so-called “death of journalism,” it is a must read. It is a fairly accurate description of what happens when bloggers repackage stories.
Yesterday, Gawker fired back at the Washington Post. Gabriel Snyder explained how bloggers add original commentary, humor, and sometimes insight. It’s one of the reasons readers keep coming back.
Today, our own Kashmir Hill entered the fray. She points out that some blogs (ahem) actually report and break news, and that news is repackaged by mainstream media sources all the time, often without sufficient attribution or original insight. Over on True/Slant, Kash writes about what happened to her popular story about Fordham’s privacy dossier on Justice Scalia:
I’m a struggling blogger making very little money. I would have been happy to write that story for the New York Times on a freelance basis and get paid for it. (As Washingtonian Magazine invited me to do for its June issue.)But that’s not how these things usually work. As journalists — the traditional ones and the “new” ones/bloggers — we get stories out into the world, and then they bounce around and gather steam and get read. It’s exciting!
I’m happy my story was covered, regurgitated and repackaged. It’s an important story about a topic -privacy- that I am passionate about.
Hear, hear. The old media simply doesn’t have a monopoly on original reporting anymore.
In case you are interested, Above the Law has a very consistent policy that we follow when it comes to attribution. Let’s discuss it after the jump, and you can weigh in with your thoughts.
Put simply, we never hide the ball when we are adding commentary to somebody else’s reporting. We link to the original source prominently before we start quoting anybody. And we name the publications we are working off of. We set aside the excerpted portions against an obvious blue background. And in case you have forgotten where the source material came from by the time you have finished reading our article, we link to the source again at the end of the piece.
It’s really not that complicated. To the extent that there’s a problem with the model, Kash puts the problem like this:
It’s not primarily bloggers killing newspapers. It’s a public that doesn’t want to read real paper anymore. It’s readers who want humor, voice, and a strong point of view in the news they read. It’s companies that are cutting back on advertising in the middle of a recession. The world is evolving and we all need to change with it, and embrace the ease with which our little stories can now get out and spread their little wings and fly.
I would simply add that in this evolving world, readers themselves are part of the equation and can add original content of their own. With that in mind, what do you guys think about this little dust up between Gawker and the Washington Post?
The Evolution of Journalism (Or: How The New York Times Stole My Blog Story) [True/Slant]
The Death of Journalism (Gawker Edition) [Washington Post]
The Time Gawker Put the Washington Post Out of Business [Gawker]
Earlier: Justice Scalia Responds to Fordham Privacy Invasion!
(40) Comments
Comments
It's "hear, hear!" You horse' s ass. (As in "oyez, oyez!")
Mystal, you suck. You failed the bar. Just admit it.
first-iferous!
Hear, hear. Not here, here.
kash is wealthy beyond belief sooooooo
SHART.
FART.
"Put simply, we never hide the ball when we adding commentary to somebody else's reporting."
Death of copy editors
Simple point is this: most blogging (such as ATL) is absolutely NOT journalism. Sure, you guys may report and write stories and all that, but as long as there are numerous typos and grammatical errors in your posts, you can absolutely not be classified as a journalist no matter how impressive the content of your post is.
I applaud Kashmir's courage to speak out about this. The WSJ does this all the time to other financial journalist. Even when I would break news at the NYP they wouldn't credit us for reporting it first. I'm thankful some of my peers have called them out recently - after Dealbreaker was first to report that the SEC was investigating a hedge fund (NIR Group) that could be our next Ponzi scheme.
http://blogs.reuters.com/commentaries/2009/07/25/was-sec-slow-to-probe-nir-group/
Even Forbes gave Dealbreaker credit for advancing the NIR Group story. I say new media should keep reminding the reader they broke it first and not feel like a show-off. It takes lots of voices to make change happen.
Teri Buhl
"Put simply, we never hide the ball when we are adding commentary to somebody else's reporting."
Even your edit sucks. How about "when we [add] commentary"? Too few syllables?
Where is PE?
Gawker - Ship be sinkin'
WaPo - You sank my battleship.
ATL - Elie ate a whole in the ship
Crappy editing aside, Elie's repackaging of Kash's story "makes" good points.
But one would be well served just to read Kash's entire article. (Fewer typos).
Elie:
Great post. This is an interesting issue that is going to gain steam. As online advertisement revenue assumes greater importance for both traditional media outlets and new media outlets, the clamor over attribution related to original content is only going to get louder.
AP has largely been waging this battle on behalf of the old school, but Kash makes a really good point here - i.e. plenty of original reporting is now occuring by bloggers who don't receive attribution or credit by the same outlets that are bitching about not receiving attribution, credit, or a share in ad revenue from bloggers.
We associates are so used to partners taking our shit and claiming credit for it (unless there is a mistake... then we get full credit) that the complaints from the traditional outlets are not likely to be well-received here.
Elie, you stole my story from True/Slant!
Actually, I just want to encourage people to check out Judge Richard Posner's post on the future of newspapers (http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2009/06/the_future_of_n.html). He wants to protect them by banning linking. If that happens, I'll be writing a new post on The True Death of Journalism.
As horrible as Elie is as an editor, I enjoyed this post and the related articles. I would have liked to see more of a focus on the policy debate of amending copyright laws to resurrect unfair competition liability (since this IS a legal blog), but maybe in a future post we can expect that.
"I would simply add that in this evolving world, readers themselves are part of the equation and can add original content of their own."
To the extent that you are simply referring to humorous quips, you are correct. But you add very little substance to any of the stories that you borrow. Instead, bloggers are the parasites of the media-world: feeding off the work and effort of others while contributing little to the story. You may be cheering on the death of journalism, but once that dark day arrives, your number is up as well.
@14: I'd hit that.
16,
No one is cheering the death of journalism. The point is that a new form of journalism now exists and that a symbiotic relationship can exist.
Kash makes some good points but the proliferation of news aggregators is spawning an era of lazy reporting. After all, if I'm running a news company, I am faced with the option of either 1) paying big money for a a quality investigative reporter to send overseas as a foreign correspondant, or sit in an office and read thousand page bills in Congress, or investigate a lead about a scandal in some large corporation; or 2) paying less for a random college journalism major to troll the web and add some jokes to stories someone else did all the work for. Why make your own dinner when you can eat at someone else's table for free?
Pretty soon there won't be any quality labor out there doing the quality journalism and the news industry will consist of college drop outs following burnt out celebrities around and waiting for them to O.D. or make a sex tape.
I think this is the first time that Kash has commented as a commenter in the comments.
Kash is a struggling writer making little money?
I have one suggestion that will drastically increase your income potential - apply to law school!
Not that I blog, but at least for posting, to avoid plagiarism issues (meaning ethically/morally personally), I at least MENTION if something's not my idea or whatever. Sometimes I don't remember and so just write e.g. "I believe I read on a blog recently that...". So long as there are no copyright issues (only ideas are stolen...) I don't have a problem with repackaging IF at least some mention is made of the originating source.
#7 is right on.
And let me add to that. If ATL thinks that the future of journalism is... blogs like ATL, then Elie had better remove those scare quotes from "death of journalism."
Part of this site's mission appears to be more proactive in gathering information directly from its readers than traditional media publications. That could be a good idea, except this site corrects itself far too infrequently to meet the standards of even the crappiest newspaper. Moreover, that "grassroots" model lends itself to laziness. How frequently do the editors here do actual reporting, as opposed to sitting around and waiting for the tipsters come to them? Not too frequently, as far as I can tell.
Kash is right that bloggers are not killing traditional media; to provide an example, newspaper readership has been falling since before the advent of the Internet. But bloggers are clueless if they think they're remotely prepared to step in and fill the void that will be left when traditional media is gone.
7 - Are you kidding me? Typos mean someone is not a journalist? Spare me. Newspapers are filled with typos and the talking heads on TV misspeak with reqularity.
And if you don't like what ATL presents - why do you keep reading and, even more to the point, commenting on their works?
#6 is right on.
And let me add to that. If ATL thinks that the future of journalism is... blogs like ATL, then Elie had better remove those scare quotes from "death of journalism."
Part of this site's mission appears to be more proactive in gathering information directly from its readers than traditional media publications. That could be a good idea, except this site corrects itself far too infrequently to meet the standards of even the crappiest newspaper. Moreover, that "grassroots" model lends itself to laziness. How frequently do the editors here do actual reporting, as opposed to sitting around and waiting for the tipsters come to them? Not too frequently, as far as I can tell.
Kash is right that bloggers are not killing traditional media; to provide an example, newspaper readership has been falling since before the advent of the Internet. But bloggers are clueless if they think they're remotely prepared to step in and fill the void that will be left when traditional media is gone.
Oops. Ignore post 23. Meant to say 6 is correct. I guess I need a copy editor just as much as ATL.
-23/25
Kash's income exceeds that of every ATL reader (even PE's). Mostly in the form of rental income and tax-free munis. Her interest's interest earns more than most of us put together. Passive income, nice if you can get it.
Kash's article is good. We need more of those here on ATL
WTF does this have to do with law?
I think there is a promissory estoppel claim in here somewhere...
oh, and someone is TTT
and also, of course, THIRTIETH!
(thirtieth is the new first.)
I'll add [something about someone being fat]
and [something about bad grammar]
Now we have covered everything. You're welcome.
Wow. The difference between Kash and Mysttttal is astonishing. Fire Elie and give his salary to Kash!!!!
30 You forgot Latham, PE, Rogue Associate
I would also make some sex with Kash. She would be a 10 in my country. Many men would like to make the sex with Kash.
Shafeef
I'm glad to see ATL take on this issue. Reading my own local newspaper each day, and even the NY Times, I've noticed that most stories do a substantial amount of repackaging. They repackage info from other news articles, government reports, experts, etc.
Many stories contain no original content and nothing that can't be easily found with a quick Google search. Feature stories about gardening, the start of hurricane season, effects of the bad economy on people, etc typically don't include much original content.
For example, a newspaper recently had a large feature about avoiding mosquitos One story dealt with preventing them from breeding, another about methods to repel them and safety issues, another about how a mosquito bites. All of this info can be obtained from wikipedia, only government publications, and even professional bloggers. Prior to the internet, newspaper publishers may have been doing a public service by writing such articles, even none of the facts or ideas were original. Today that has changed.
Here's another fun story to misappropriate -- er, repackage / link to / whatever.
Only in America.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/08/04/suspended_boston_police_officer_barrett_sues_commissioner_mayor/
29 - Clearly you're not a lawyer.
No article written by Elie can ever be considered as a "must read" article. Well... maybe for some unintentional comedy.
The newspapers and TV news are losing readership largely because they were monopolies and now they aren't. They were advertising choke points, if you wanted to get news, you were a customer, if you wanted to reach the customer, you were an advertiser.
They have lost that monopoly, and in their current form, they will disappear.
But then, news used to be shown in movie houses each day in the form of newsreels, and TV killed that business.
Posner has it exactly backwards. He shouldn't argue in favor of banning linking, he should require it. If you don't link, and you steal my stuff, automatic damages. Then, the real original sources of new stuff will get the traffic in the end.
Ohh, "struggling blogger," boo hoo. Cry me a tiny lake. Blogging is not a real job! If anything, it's a hobby. Step away from the computer and get a damn life.
39 - Haha. I know that's what I want to do with my JD too . . . become a blogger. Then I can be cool like David Lat.