JG Editorial Staff Needs A Refresher On Journalism Standards & Ethics
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 9/17/08 @ 12:53 am - Filed Under Uncategorized
It’s well known that the JG does not recognize blogs as a source of information for any of their reporting. They justify this with a policy that says if they can independently verify the information then there is no need to cite the original source. I can understand this in respect to their competitors. Frankly it would be a little ridiculous if all the local traditional media outlets were constantly saying “as reported at WANE (or WOWO or JG, etc).”
I think this policy fails to address the unique situation of blogs as we are not competitors but that is neither here nor there in regards to the real point of this post. What cannot be disputed is that if you lift a quote from another news source then you should absolutely attribute that information - no exceptions. Just so everybody is on the same page here was a quote from an editorial in today’s JG:
The chorus of Harrison Square critics already has chimed in on local blog sites, vowing to take its health care dollars elsewhere: “I sure will avoid any Parkview visits during the rest of my life – and you should too!” wrote one of the critics.
First of all that wasn’t written on “local blog sites” - it was written right here by John Kalb. But more importantly the JG has lifted an exact quote from another news source and didn’t bother to cite the source of the quote. How do readers know that the editorial staff didn’t just make it up?
If the JG wants to ignore blogs then go ahead and ignore us but don’t lift quotes from us and not give them proper attribution - it’s petty and in my opinion completely unethical.
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8 Responses to “JG Editorial Staff Needs A Refresher On Journalism Standards & Ethics”
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Maybe you should return the same favor.
Fort Wayne Observed is now referencing them as a “local newspaper” in its posts and links rather than mentioning them by name.
Wow! That’s pretty lousy journalism. Do they really hate blogs that much?
To me its the same as if they’d lifted quotes from the NY Times.
Jeff-journalism standards and ethics and the Journal are the classic case of an OXYMORON ! If you don’t agree with their point of view you are a scum bag and they will try their best to destroy you editorially. Ask Jon Olinger about their campaign to discredit him!! They stopped trying to draw a line between news reporting and editorial comment a long time ago-check their front page article about the Parkview naming as an example.
..Or we could all just call them our “local DAILY MIRROR”…lol!
For all the news that’s “print to fit”
;)
B.G.
Starting today, when I quote them I’ll use, “local old media” and will no longer link to their story. Why should we be sending them traffic? It only increases how much they make off impression based advertising.
1)
I agree it’s neither here nor there but I would actually disagree about blogs not being competition.
2) You are dead right, the JG lifted a direct quote without attribution, this is poor journalism and probably unethical.
3) You can still link to the JG but just add the following to your links and they won’t get “credit” in search engines, etc.
rel=”nofollow”
Example <a href=”http://journalgazette.net” rel=”nofollow”>JG Link</a>
4) If you want to quote an article, just copy it’s contents wholesale from their webpage and then make sure you use the following citation so that someone could find the source, this will save you legal troubles (this is called sourcings, something the JG doesn’t apparently konw about) as well as reduce ad impressions to any websites you want to use information from without giving them “web cred” (kind of like Street Cred, only different).
Citations styles found here:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/int_cita.htm
[...] a follow-up to my post regarding a local newspaper lifting a quote from this site and not giving it proper attribution, I decided to send an e-mail to the editor of said paper [...]
During the ACPL Shortbus Movie scandal they quoted my blog directly and by inference but no cite was given I didnt even hear about it til Pat White talked about it on the air and then I realized as I was conversing with him that they had quoted me almost directly.
Original Post:
http://frfozybearftwin.blogspot.com/2008/01/shortbus-creates-local-controversy-at.html
My Post Thanking them for quoting me:
http://frfozybearftwin.blogspot.com/2008/01/f6-quoted-in-news-sentinel-regarding.html
The trick is to just keep a rolling document/post going on your blog entitled THANK YOU OLD MEDIA SOURCES FOR PLAGIARIZING THIS FORUM/BLOG! and then cross cite the crap out of their work, article by article - paragraph by paragraph.