A story on a story

Seth Wickersham dropped the juicy Patriots power struggle story on ESPN.com this morning.

Scott Polacek of BleacherReport.com wrote a story about it, that's on CNN.com
He mentioned Wickersham and the article, of course he didn't link it. And then, proceeded to regurgitate Wickersham's story, including quotes!
WTF?

If I was Wickersham I would be PISSED.

 

I'm not going to link it, because fuck them, but Deadspin has a re-hash of Seth's story, with credit. It also includes four very large block quotes and has 88,000 hits. I would guess some very small percentage of those readers clicked through. It's bullshit either way.

 

I read a rehash. I'm not wading through a longform on the fucking Patriots.

 

This has got to be considered plagiarism of some kind. If I'm ESPN, I've got my lawyer sending them emails immediately requesting credit and links be published in these other websites' stories.

 

Deadspin pulls this shit all the time. It's complete fucking bullshit. There's a thread on here I started about it a few years ago when they pulled some similar shit on a story.

There's a former poster here who adores Deadspin. Thinks it's a game-changer. Constantly links to their pieces instead of the initial pieces, because he essentially thinks it's lame-o to link to legacy publications. Whenever I call him on it, he says that I'm just mad they scooped my friends on the Manti T'eo story five years ago.

 

Here it is.

Also Wickersham.

Shouldn't Deadspin do its own damn reporting?

https://deadspin.com/bombshell-espn-report-the-patriots-were-huge-cheaters-1729286402

 

The worst is when people here link to the rehashed articles. Link to the original folks!

 

I agree but isn't complaining about this a waste of time. This is what the world looks like in the 21st century.

 

I'm far from a Patriots fan, but the original ESPN story was more than worth the time it took to read it.

I'm not happy with myself that I don't feel like I have the time to "wade" through full books anymore. But when I get to the point that I don't feel like I have the time to "wade" through a good longform ... that's really going to bother me.

 

tl/dr

 

OK, well-played.

 

I see similar stuff all the time with the NBA team I've followed since I was a kid. ESPN and the national publications seem to be more plugged in to the team than the local beat writers, which is sad, so whenever the national publications report from sourcing that a trade or something else newsworthy could be on the way, the local beat writers simply rewrite the story.

They do give the national publication credit, but simply write what others are writing rather than confirming the information through their own individual sourcing and contacts. There's little to no original reporting; it's always reporting what other publications are saying. I realize that is different than what Deadspin did, but it's similar in that it's lazy and indicative of how some publications do things these days.