Call us a cry baby…so be it. Why do we keep asking for credits on stories which we’ve genuinely broken first? Why do we need to get validation, so to speak, from these bigger media sites and companies? Does it make us look silly? Is there a right way to define credit? Is there a right way to do it? Is it wrong to not credit? The answers to all these questions are not black and white, as with most things in life. One thing is sure: however journalists and media companies have been used to giving credit (or not) in the past, just because they did it a certain way then doesn’t mean we can’t ask for a change. Things have changed…earlier only these bigger media companies had a boombox…now we do. If we live by feeding off them, we also link to them. That’s our credit policy…our whole reason for existence is crediting other news sources.
So when we do the hard work and get a story, all we expect is that when someone else feeds off our stories, they do the right thing: credit and link. That’s the fabric of that binds everyone online. It is almost symbiotic: it is competitive as hell, make no mistake, but it is also acknowledging that when someone else does a better job than you, you link to it. That’s the new new journalism.
One of the defense bigger news sources have employed in the past is ignorance, ignorance that they never knew it was on a smaller site like ours. In this hyper-technorati-feedster-google-blogpulse linkedup world, ignorance is not bliss, it is idiocy. For journalist, there is no sin bigger than laziness.
I’ve badgered CNET News.com for it in the past, and I think they’ve become better at it. We wrote the post below, and WSJ changed its story. This is not a lost cause. Ask, and yes shall get..and if you still don’t, ask again. That’s a truism of the American way of life, as much as it is in the media ecosystem and online.
That is why we (and journalists like Om Malik and Glenn Fleishman) fight for this.
Subscriber content
?
Subscriber content comes from Gigaom Research, bridging the gap between breaking news and long-tail research. Visit any of our reports to learn more and subscribe.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Comments have been disabled for this post