Seriously, what’s up with old media not crediting bloggers? | Hacker News Reader

Seriously, what’s up with old media not crediting bloggers?

cdixon.org

87 pointssamography54 comments

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

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...

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"

Kudos on owning up to a big mistake, but the story about merely quoting a friend seems incredibly thin.

I agree. If he had no idea what the source was, why quote it? Why not go back and ask?

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.

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.

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.

The software should already be there, I've seen it mentioned many times over the years.

If one of those software producers would provide an API (something similar to Automattic's Akismet for spam) I'm sure there's money to be made in selling that service outside the academic realm.

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.

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.

Good point! Specifically, reputable journalistic outfits should implement a policy of running their materials through TurnItIn before publishing. This would allow editorial control over plagiarism. Any journalists want to comment on whether or not this is existing policy and why?

If you have to have your writers run their material through something to make sure they're not stealing it from somewhere else, shouldn't hire them in the first place. Really, most journalists would never do this.

We run our writer's material through spell checkers and grammar editing. We run it through fact checking processes. In theory, a good writer would never need any of these, but in the real world it is a useful step. If we do THESE things, then why not a step that requires nearly no effort (just use an automated tool) and which WOULD catch some cases that have affected even major publications with excellent reputations?

Yeah, because Googling for a quoted piece of the text is soo hard?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%22Angry+Birds+was+Rovio%E2%80%99s%C2%A...

In addition to deserving that huge apology, Dixon deserves monetary compensation from Josh Linkner. Words don't write themselves, and so Linkner had to realize he was using someone else's work without permission -- even if he didn't know who authored the work he was plagiarizing. Linkner only cares because he was caught red-handed. If I was Dixon I would seek statutory damages without question.

Read the law: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/504

> I had no idea it was yours or anyone else's

So, who did he think wrote it? It had to be someone's.

Would of being nice if he just apologized without the story about highest standards and a "friend".

PR 101. Just apologize, as simply as your lawyer will let you. Don't complicate the issue, or netizens will dissect everything you say, which just drags the crisis out.

A journo should know better.

The problem is, people try to justify themselves. Real sleaze-balls probably don't care, but normal people (who may have screwed up a bit) always try to blame someone else. I would. It's bad PR though.

"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.

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.

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).

or anyone else's

Via what, immaculate typing?

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

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...

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... (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.

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.

I think Felix Salmon's response was a good defense of the old media: http://felixsalmon.tumblr.com/post/18191067872/the-wall-stre...

New media is obsessed with credit and scoops. You can claim this is a moral thing, but I'd more likely attribute it to finance. New media makes all its money off clicks and views rather than subscriptions, so flash in the pan scoops are much more profitable for them than old media. It isn't incumbent on a journalist to indicate where all everything that contributed to an article came from (that is strictly in a "nice to have but not essential" category), just ensure all the information they provide is cited. The OP's article is a dicer situation of clear plagiarism, but I think new media has a dollar sign sized chip in its shoulder about linking and credit.

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.

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.

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.

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"

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...

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

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...)

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...).

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.

Actually he presented this at a conference in Edinburgh called FLOSSUK a while before he wrote the article, and since he's one of the people who was involved in making OpenOffice happen he probably knew about it a long time before you did :-) These things happen,

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.

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

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

"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.

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.

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

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...

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).

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?

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.

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.

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.

At least The Verge et al. credit bloggers.

... 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.

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

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

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

Fear

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.

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