

Seriously, what’s up with old media not crediting bloggers? - samography
http://cdixon.org/2012/04/06/seriously-whats-up-with-old-media-not-crediting-bloggers/

======
nikcub
I had a journalist rip off one of my posts without mentioning me as the source
or even that I discovered the story. I found him on Twitter and sent him a
message about it, and got no response. I dropped it because it happens so
often.

I ended up following him on Twitter. He later published another story that was
a slight follow up to my own story and series of articles. This article of his
got a lot of attention. In an irony of all ironies, he then tweeted:

"This is why we need old media and journalists, bloggers would never have
found or investigated this story" [1]

He had a bunch of other journalists replying in strong agreement.

He was talking about a story that was 90% built on posts that I and other
bloggers wrote, and not only took the credit for it but claimed that there is
no way non-professional journalists would be able to 'investigate' such a
story. I pinged him again with 'oh the irony' and a link to my blog. No
response again.

[1] Paraphrasing. He later deleted the tweet

~~~
batista
You should have screen-shoted the tweet, and send it along with your original
story to some rival online outlet.

Journalists like exposing other such frauds...

------
sachitgupta
Josh Linker, author of the Fast Company piece, responded in the comments:

    
    
      "Hi Chris.  Josh Linkner here, the author of this piece @ Fast Company.  
      I owe you a HUGE apology!!  A friend of mine sent me that
      excerpt and I had no idea it was yours or anyone else's so
      I didn't attribute it when I wrote my post.  As an author,
      VC, and entrepreneur I hold myself to the highest standards
      and I'm deeply sorry this happened.  Will correct and cite
      you ASAP. Again, honest mistake and I'm sorry it happened.
      Happy to chat further if you'd like - www.JoshLinkner.com"

~~~
jacobian
If you didn't write it and don't cite a source, it's plagiarism. Doesn't
matter if a friend sent it to you in email -- that just means you plagiarized
a friend, which is kinda worse actually.

It's really hard for me to see this as an "honest mistake"; it just seems more
like your average, run-of-the-mill, laziness-induced plagiarism.

~~~
e28eta
And in the age of Google, where you can just put quotes around the first
sentence and find the original source, it shows a complete lack of care.

~~~
wladimir
Once Google indexes Borges' Library of Babel, though, you will find that any
sentence is already used, and every article is already written.

On a more serious note: it would be interesting to add a check to CMS systems
to automatically look up all sentences in an article before submitting and
apply information theory to compute a "plagiarism" coefficient. No doubt these
kind of systems already exist to detect student plagiarism.

~~~
Lockyy
Indeed, my university uses a service called Turnitin to rate the percentage of
coursework that is plagiarised, along with giving where from etc.

It's pretty nice actually, can recognise when things are quoted and not passed
off as your own.

~~~
azernik
My high school actually used this too - my teacher once showed my a sample
report, and it was actually very good at detecting plagiarism even with words
changed, sentence order mildly munged, etc. (with percentage probabilities).
They seem to have a fairly good model of what kind of changes writers make
when copying material.

------
scott_s
"Not giving credit" is not strong enough. That's the term you use when you
pull a quote or a fact without attribution.

This is plagiarism. Or it _was_. Now it's just lazy writing.

------
beloch
Old media in general does not cite its sources adequately. Most articles that
report on research fail to cite the publications they are reporting on and, in
most cases, butchering quite badly. This is probably a hold-over from a time
when such publications were beyond easy reach of the average reader, but that
has changed. Even if the article is behind a journal's pay-wall, pre-prints
are usually available through sites such as arXiv. New media does a far better
job of linking to sources and I thank them for it.

------
keithwinstein
Obviously the Fast Company blogger (Josh Linker) should have cited (at the
least!) Chris Dixon. And his explanation doesn't really hold water: "A friend
of mine sent me that excerpt and I had no idea it was yours or anyone else's
so I didn't attribute it when I wrote my post."

But, speaking as a former reporter, it's a fallacy to tar every medium (or
even "old media") for the f-up of a Fast Company blogger. The responsibility
belongs to that writer and publication; other outlets do not bear collective
guilt for a competitor's screwup.

See <http://xkcd.com/385/> \-- the same argument properly applies to
generalizations about newsgathering organizations (or in this case, blogs
hosted by magazines started in the first dot-com era).

~~~
scott_s
_or anyone else's_

Via what, immaculate typing?

His explanation really betrays the fact that he doesn't understand what
plagiarism is.

------
chrisacky
I remember reading Chris Dixon's original post. I even popped the question to
a friend... "Pop Quiz.. Name one game other than Angry Birds that Rovio had
produced".

He named three... all of them being Angry Birds update releases. lol.

MG Siegler has had multiple rants about mainstream news outlets not
attributing him for scoops and releases.

<http://tinyurl.com/mgsieglerrant>

"The Wallstreet Journal is Fucking Bullshit"

[http://parislemon.com/post/18182094905/the-wall-street-
journ...](http://parislemon.com/post/18182094905/the-wall-street-journal-is-
fucking-bullshit)

~~~
nchlswu
There was some interesting discussion about bloggers breaking news and
attribution here: [http://gigaom.com/2012/02/25/is-linking-just-polite-or-is-
it...](http://gigaom.com/2012/02/25/is-linking-just-polite-or-is-it-a-core-
value-of-journalism/) (and in related twitter discussions)

I'm not entirely familiar with 'old media' practices, but I always thought if
two news outlets independently confirmed a news story they didn't acknowledge
whoever broke the story first. Or if another news outlet breaks a story, they
independently confirm and don't give attribution, since technically, they
confirmed the story, so it's 'their news.' I've only heard a news source
attribute another source when news is breaking in real time (i.e. X is
reporting 7 are dead at the scene). Breaking a story != confirming or actually
being a journalist's source.

In some cases, attribution is very important - like in the original post.
However, I think a lot of 'new media' beef with old media practices is just a
shift in ideology . Bloggers are closer to the action and transparency is more
important. Old media is much more rigorous but is less transparent. I
personally think the best approach is something in between the two.

~~~
msredmond
You basically have the 'old media' practices right, but there's some
variances. So yes, let's say your competitor breaks a story -- if they're the
only ones and you write it up based on them bringing the story to your
attention, you should give them credit, whether or not that's your only
verification that the story happened.

However, if you feel that you would have gotten the story anyhow (or, even
more likely, you were both working on it at the same time, and they just
happened to publish first -- this happens all the time), as long as you were
independently able to verify and really didn't rely on them for story, you
don't have to credit. And this is a good thing -- you don't want reporters to
rush their reporting over something silly like credit. But it's a trust thing,
just like sourcing overall is.

Another variance: Let's say, for example, that a clown is riding a horse in
Time Square, and for some reason you want that story for your Washington state
paper. You really shouldn't write about it until you can independently verify.
But you can't because you don't have reporters or sources on the scene, and
you don't want to credit just the NYT. So then the Boston Globe reports it,
then Wash Post -- and all three say they've independently verified the story
(vs. citing original NYT report). THEN you can pretty much assume it's fact,
then you don't really need to source the papers -- you can say according to
multiple reports (or say nothing at all).

It also falls back to you can't copyright facts, just the language the
information is presented. As a journalist you're responsible for making sure
the facts are correct (generally held at 3 sources, whatever they are), but
once you've done that, you can go for it.

But that's why just not sourcing someone (bad practice) is nothing close to
the linked example because plagiarism (exact language = violating copyright)
is something you can get sued for.

Probably WAY more info than anyone wanted, but FYI in case it helps.

------
leviathant
As a guy who runs a news site about a band that gives me exclusive news, I've
been whining about this for a dozen years now. I've been ripped off by MTV,
Spin, Rolling Stone, NME, Kerrang!, you name it. A friend of mine was at one
point almost wholly responsible for the Wikipedia article on Nine Inch Nails,
and related tales of seeing his writing in publications worldwide.

In my experience, I've seen things improve - at least in the realm of music
news. I assume it's because music-related news outlets are hiring people who
got their start blogging, and who have a better appreciation for citing and
linking to your sources. I think it's going to take a while for this trend to
seep into more 'serious' 'journalistic' organizations, but it's definitely
getting better.

~~~
swang
Your friend (or you, not sure if you mean your friend is complaining)
understands that once he writes content into a Wikipedia article he agrees to
give away the contents of his work to the public right? That's the whole point
of Wikipedia. Your friend doesn't deserve credit, Wikipedia does.

~~~
leviathant
Of course he does. I think it would be quite a task to bring a Wikipedia
Article up to "featured article" status and not understand such a basic fact
about Wikipedia. I suppose my inclusion of that bit was more about the oddity
of seeing things you wrote, copied verbatim into hundreds of magazines,
newspapers, and online articles. I think that when we discussed this, his
point was also that Wikipedia was not credited.

The web was built for referential text. It's one of the basic concepts of
"Hypertext" - that it's 2012 and so-called journalists fail to use this simple
process to give credit where it's due is kind of sad.

~~~
swang
Want to apologize for that last sentence since I wrote it after feeling sick
in the middle of the night. After I reread it when I woke up it sounded pretty
rude.

Not that he should or shouldn't deserve credit for editing but in the end
Wikipedia should be the one cited. I would suggest that Wikipedia acknowledge
some editors for their work but that to me would probably result in more
bureaucracy and infighting than any good it would do acknowledging
contributing editors.

But I agree, very sad when a big site doesn't cite their sources even if it
was, "an email from a friend"

------
Malcx
It's not always the case that they don't credit, I'm running a twitter feed of
the Falklands conflict on a 30 year delay, and so far,in the first week, I
have been contacted by two tv companies who wanted to know who they should
attribute them to...

------
WalterSear
Hey now! It's hard enough work putting food on your family without having to
promote the people who are doing it for you.

------
darxius
This happened to me too. I posted an article on my blog and it got on HN's
front page. It was about how people have to stop sending .doc files as
attachments via email and to use something like .pdf instead. (my article is
here: [http://maxmackie.github.com/2012/03/19/Stop-
distributing-.do...](http://maxmackie.github.com/2012/03/19/Stop-
distributing-.doc-files))

A couple days later, this guy wrote about the same exact thing, bringing up
the same exact arguments as I did (his link:
[http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/03/the-
magi...](http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/03/the-magic-of-
editable-pdfs/index.htm)).

He posted about a week after me. I didn't really do anything about it, but he
could have at least mentioned where he got the idea/information. Incompetence.

~~~
webmink
I wrote the article you're complaining about, which is actually mainly about
making hybrid PDFs. I did not see your article, let alone copy it; I would
have linked to it if I had. I have been working on that piece for a few months
off-and-on and pitched it as a "lightning talk" at FLOSS UK Spring 2012 in
Edinburgh beforehand.

More than that, I was a manager of the team that created the hybrid PDF
feature in OpenOffice at Sun, and have been advocating avoiding editable
attachments for years - the earliest I can find on my blog is
<http://www.webmink.net/2003/07/feature-creep.htm> but I am pretty sure I was
advocating it before.

The web is a big place where there are often people working on the same ideas
as you (which is why software patents are a travesty), and I recommend
avoiding accusing people of incompetence without a little more research.

------
Steuard
One of the most egregious "old media disrespects new media" stories I've seen
was last year when The Daily Mirror lifted a complete blog entry by comedian
Dave Gorman and printed it in the paper. They did give him credit, but never
asked permission or paid him for his work. (He decided not to take action
against them for it, but it seemed that was mostly because he thought it was
pointless to go up against their legal team.)

<http://gormano.blogspot.com/2011/12/ctrl-c-ctrl-v.html>

------
naner
Plagarism is generally more sucessful when you don't list your sources.

------
donohoe
"Old Media"!?

It was launched in November 1995. To many thats old, but to most I would think
thats not "Old Media" in the usual sense of the word.

~~~
cop359
The "Old" refers to the medium of distribution.

I have no idea what "Fast Company" is, but according to wikipedia it's a
printed magazine.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
In that case, "Traditional Media" might be a better term.

------
philco
Josh Linkner publicly admitted his mistake, offerend to talk it over with
Chris, and even changed the text of the article, all within one hour.

Dixon is being a little harsh, I think.

[http://www.philco.me/philcosblog/2012/4/6/apologizing-to-
chr...](http://www.philco.me/philcosblog/2012/4/6/apologizing-to-chris-dixon-
this-is-how-its-done.html)

~~~
msredmond
Nope, no way. Dixon wasn't harsh enough, because he thought it was just a lack
of credit, whereas it was actually plagiarism. The reporter took writing that
wasn't his that he played off as his own (under his byline, no quotes, no
source). Completely unethical and irresponsible for a journalist to do that.
The fact that he got in via an e-mail and thought he could just "use" it shows
that this reporter has a lot to learn (if that even happened -- I've never met
another journalist who would do that, ever).

~~~
brokentone
Agreed. It was a public offense, and the theft of his IP. And really really
lazy since a simple Internet search would have returned the article. A public
callout is certainly not unwarranted. However I question what would have
happened were he not Chris Dixon. He has a solid platform and the community
respect to take on a writer for fast company. What about one of the rest of
us?

------
danmaz74
Why not create a website where bloggers that find out these ripoffs can point
out those cases? I think that the public exposure would create enough
disincentive to do so.

------
tep
On a related note: It always saddens me when news programs on TV use footage
from youtube and don't mention the author but youtube as source.

------
benologist
I can't even imagine why you'd blame old media when AOL, Gawker, Business
Insider, Mashable, The Verge etc show them over and over and over and over and
over and over and over and over and over again that the key to success in the
internet age is SEO spam and cheap writing / rewriting.

~~~
sp332
At least The Verge et al. credit bloggers.

~~~
benologist
... with a discrete link at the end of their rewrite of that article that
conveniently includes the punchline and any images or videos they felt would
enable them to better hijack your work.

------
ggwicz
Seriously, what's up with bloggers wanting credit from old media?

------
joncalhoun
The original article has a reference to your blog at the top (at least it did
when I checked).

~~~
samography
Just to be clear, I'm just the submitter, this isn't my blog.

Also when I looked at the article originally it did _not_ have that link in
the first sentence. Google Cache won't load for me but here's a screenshot of
the preview from Google: <http://cl.ly/1h2w0I413X063l3e0Z2k>

------
guscost
_Fear_

------
rprasad
Probably the same thing issue that bloggers have with copying old media
articles verbatim and then adding a modicum of "context". In their respective
business models, things are done a certain way and they follow that model even
if it conflicts with the model used by their source.

