Crikey, Buzzfeed, Paul Barry and us: What is good digital citizenship?

Paul Barry is hardly one of Australia’s most respected journalists…. His a journalist, yes. But not a respected one.

I couldn’t agree more. Whilst not a journalist, I have a hearty interest in the sector and it always saddens me how stingy many mainstream/legacy organisations are when it comes to giving credit. How much does a link really cost?

Deary me – the regurgitation of a puffy press release as news – as a former PR I often choked to see journo bylines on material that was a straight retype of faxed in content. (showing my age).In the era now of cut and paste – whoa! Original means ” I was the first one to google for it”!
Early days Media Watch had whole segments on the flagrant (not fragrant) plagiarism of media releases!

Regardless of what Barry said, the fact is that BuzzFeed is an aggregator. Crikey is a commentator or whatever. Mumbrella is a trade media site that regards as “exclusive” the reporting of a newspaper’s production cockups.
It is one of the very serious problems of media IMO that the publishers of large scale news media have failed to see their role in the digital media meltdown. (That is, to remain the reliable source of important news.) The fact that Fairfax and others try to compete with aggregators is foolish. The fact that the end up with pathetic yarns about women’s body parts is an indictment of their leadership.

I don’t know what you’re moaning about: He said ‘a lot of it is reproduced’, and you showed that less than half of Mumbrella content is original stuff – the rest is press release rewrites, linking to other websites, writing a blurb about TV ratings and promoting yourself. Which matches that Barry said.

Paul Barry is one of the country’s most respected? Shows how lw the bar is.

Mamamia as to be one the greatest culprits.

It’s an issue that really irks me, to be honest. Some media outlets bear the cost of journos, editors, lawyers, photographers, etc, etc and then the hyenas come alone and pinch it.

It’s an area of modern media that needs addressing.

Well i have more respect for Paul Barry than I do for the pretend Journalists who decorate NEWS LTD pages most seem to wait for instructions from above before opening their collective mouths,
Also what Journalists do you respect Radio none I know of,TV on Commercial TV not one just there to sell advertising,all sing from the same bland song sheet as with Ch 7 and the West also 6PR Perth run Stokes version of reality.
At least Barry has the courage to have a go at the powerful which is more than you can say For NEWS LTD and Commercial TV, Radio,they may have been brave once but they soon learned to roll over and play footsie with the vested interests who run the place

Paul is human – like the rest of us – but let’s keep in mind his track record. His work has won a number of awards, including an AJA Walkley award in 1993 for ‘Rich Man, Poor Man’, which revealed bankrupt entrepreneur, Alan Bond, had secreted millions of dollars of assets overseas.

He was also highly commended in the Walkley Awards in 1989, 1990 and 1991. The first commendation was for ‘Blue Death’, his report on CSR’s negligent exposure of workers to health risks at the Wittenoom blue asbestos mine (where CSR was subsequently ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages).

And who can forget that priceless footage that catapulted his profile – handing his business card to Mr Bond who subsequently threw it to the ground and hysterically jumped up and down on it – a wonderful peice of well timed and executed publicity.

Apologies for typo “Piece” is what I had intended to type in previous… tisk tisk

Recently we brought together 43 international creative leaders from across design disciplines to explore the philosophies, processes and outcomes of some of the world’s most innovative solutions for diverse issues. http://www.agideas.net

As a not for profit, significant resources were invested in encouraging media outlets to share stories that would encourage the community to engage in this extraordinary resource. Many took the opportunity to create content for their readers from the stories, personalities and projects that were pitched as part of these efforts. Some made no acknowledgement of the source of these stories. Mumbrella was not one of them. in fact the opposite. Your hangout interview was independently relevant for your platform but respectful in its acknowledgement of the source and Agnello Dias’ pending trip to Australia. Thank you. Surprisingly our sharing of stories with media outlets is not to create free media content for media outlets but to raise awareness about the value of design driven innovation through attendance at our events. Surely collaborating on source material is not the crime but using the resources of small independent organisations with out reference, which the mass media outlets were the worst offenders.

Mumbrella is one of the most informative sites online.

I wouldn’t compare it to trash like Buzzfeed. Not really sure what Crikey is, but it’s kind of a dull one-trick-pony if you don’t enjoy “The World according to Bernard Keane.” (Can’t even be bothered using Fakeemailgenerator to bypass the paywall anymore, digressing…)

Mumbrella sits with other great niche sites like Torrentfreak, folks who do one topic really, really well. And these folks are the future of journalism, not huge bloated beasts lost in their own irrelevance. Hungry upstarts resetting what it means to do news and provide quality information and opinions.

Also fuck anyone who doesn’t link to source material. Not interested in your opinion or interpretation of the facts, buddy. I want the facts.