It’s not just Mamamia and The Daily Mail – almost everyone lifts stories
This week’s furore over The Daily Mail and Mamamia lifting a freelance journalist’s story represents the unfortunate new norm in digital publishing, argues Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes, as he shares three recent first hand examples
This Christmas, I put my hand up to be the journo who kept the Mumbrella newsdesk ticking over between Christmas and New Year.
(Don’t feel too sorry for me – I’m taking the next couple of weeks off instead to follow the E Street Band round Australia.)
In the ultimate quiet news week, it was a great opportunity to see first hand what happens when you dig out a story.
It’s a tough time to find new stuff – not much is happening, and you’ve got to look fairly hard to find what’s out there.
Tim, a very balanced piece on a trend looking very much downhill for both quality and initiative.
Tim,
When you broke the news about Cummins & Partners being added to the Allianz roster it was rather annoying, as I had known about it since December because it was confidential info revealed in the Cummins & Partners Agency of the Year document. (There was a potential conflict of interest with a client of the Melbourne office).
When we published the story on the new Allianz campaign on December 28 ~ http://www.campaignbrief.com/2.....llian.html ~ two hours before Mumbrella BTW, I think we got it first ~ we promised our contact at Cummins not to reveal the agency’s involvement until the conflict was resolved.
So I hope you can understand I felt there was no need to credit Mumbrella when I did the update.
BTW, I agree it’s annoying when other press rip off stories. It happens to us all the time, the latest being The Age lifting our January 15 article I wrote on the death of Greg Harper without linking to CB ~ http://www.theage.com.au/victo.....trh5i.html ~ which repeated on 30 other Fairfax news sites. (Eventually they added a link on the main Age article after CB pointed it out).
And every week, every exclusive ad that appears on our global site Bestadsontv.com appears within hours on ad sites around the world.
Michael
In a perverse way, the Daily Fail has to be grudgingly admired. It churns out endless junk about the loathsome Kardashian Klan and other relentless self-promoters such as PR look-at-me Roxy Whatever-Her-Name-Is that score hundreds upon hundreds of comments, virtually all of them bagging these wastes of space to hell and back. Meanwhile, the hit-o-meter is going off the dial. As the old saying goes … never mind the quality, feel the width.
Slowly but surely, journalism of any quality – and what the Fail and its ilk turn out is not journalism, just D grade entertainment – is being drowned in a sea of digital sludge. Bag newspapers all you want and, yes, their days are all but up, but at least they still, to varying degrees and standards, get out there and find stories that actually matter. Outside of the ABC and SBS, television and radio hardly ever break anything in the way of important news while the commercials, TV and radio, merely report what’s in the papers or car crashes – if it bleeds it leads.
Online sites that attempt real journalism also break very little real news – it’s an expensive, time-consuming business. Still, they always seem able to find some superannuated pollie, self-appointed expert or bolshie academic to bash out yet another over-heated opinion piece on climate change, gender politics, asylum seekers … blah, blah, blah.
The noisier it gets, the less there’s worth listening to.
BTW, good work, Tim.
Good piece Tim … rip-off merchants everywhere in the media.
For as long as I remember, AAP journos have been ‘dirty” on others just lifting their wire service copy and putting an in-house byline on the story without changing a word or giving credit.
It always amused me when I worked in a radio newsroom in the 1970s how they consistently bagged AAP copy … but it was all they bloody well read on-air. Rarely got off their backsides to chase a story or interview…just the old “rip ‘n read”.
Tim sure is more dedicated to ethics in journalism than the public gives him credit for.
“If your business model is based mainly on the output of others, then once you’ve put them out of business, you’ll have no content.”
I’ve been told by someone with close ties that Journo’s at The Guardian’s Australian digs have to produce a piece an hour or you’re on the street. Doesn’t leave a lot of time for credits.
Unfortunately I suspect we have been gradually desensitized to this problem.
Social sites are geared towards sharing which you might say is a simplistic version of what you have described.
If Google decide one day that google news will ban publishers that rinse and repeat other articles that could help.
It’s interesting to consider how different commercial business treat such behavior. Some will use copyscape and if the plagiarism is too direct perhaps a sharp letter from a lawyer will be issued.
Can you imagine getting away with running a blog that simply lifted posts from the blog of a well known brand and wrote a new title, maybe put it through a quick find and replace. You’d be just counting the days till the angry letters arrived from the originating company?
Or another though extrapolation. ABC Bank lifts all its website copy from XYZ Bank and publishes their website. They would be on the receiving end of a cease and decist.
Unfortunately, the major publishers have no respect for you; no respect for your “silly little blog” (actual quote); no respect for their readers; and no respect for themselves.
They care about UBs and clicks, in real time. Nothing else.
I think its pretty lame that its just accepted in the industry. All it does is encourage substandard talents to become journalists when in previous more ethical times, if you weren’t good you wouldn’t make it. Simples. Oh well….modern times hey.