3 ms·
In my opinion what the newspaper websites really don't like is not linking, but quoting. Quoting some idea from another source with attribution is a very commo
by greyman 17y ago
In my opinion what the newspaper websites really don't like is not linking, but quoting.
Quoting some idea from another source with attribution is a very common thing. But this practice has specific implications when applied to reported news. I saw the following practice on blogs like Huffington Post or news aggregators: they take headline and one or two paragraphs from a news article, provide a link to it, and optionally add their own content to it. Technically it is quoting with attribution, which is perfectly legal.
But as we know, the news articles are usually written in a dense form, and to produce just the headline and one paragraph is sometimes very expensive, for example when a real reporter had to go there and gather the facts.
And then, some blogger or aggregator just take it and gives back just a link - and the news websites doesn't feel that is an adequate compensation for the work needed to produce that headline and paragraph.
And, more often than not, the aggregator or blogger earned enough money to survive (since what he did is not that expensive), while the news outlet who did the reporting didn't earn enough to operate.
But of course, on the other side, it's not a fault of the blogger or aggregator that they didn't earned enough, and that's where the newspapers get it wrong. I just wanted to provide the perspective from the "other side".
- zhyder 17y ago"the aggregator or blogger earned enough money to survive (since what he did is not that expensive), while the news outlet who did the reporting didn't earn enough to operate." Great point! This is why I'm worried about a future without NYTimes and other traditional news outlets. The most dangerous possibility is that there won't be any economic incentive left to do the original investigative reporting. But maybe we don't need any economic incentive anyway, and we'll get plenty of free news from the twitter-ers, casual bloggers, cellphone video uploaders and other common folk.
- brandnewlow 17y agoI think new ways to fund investigative reporting will arise, and that they'll be just as problematic, ephemeral, and controversial as the current ones. Obvious example: How deeply can an investigative reporter at NBC really probe into the affairs of General Electric, the company that owns it? Similarly, if a bunch of local realtors got together and hired an investigative reporter to cover real estate, people would howl and moan about conflict of interest...but that person would probably dig up some great stories, just not stories about the companies funding him/her.
- anamax 17y ago> In my opinion what the newspaper websites really don't like is not linking, but quoting. They may not like quoting more than they don't like linking, but they are campaigning against linking (and quoting). They're also arguing that they should be given an exclusive on information. In a recent example, they think that folks shouldn't be allowed to post that MJ died after reading about it from a "legit" on-line source.