I done been violated, I think

Hold up cats.

First: Slappy is not a PR guy. He is a reporter, as he has stated multiple times.

Second: The said awards ceremony is a very big deal. It's not the type of event that has to beg for publicity. This is actually one of the bigger award ceremonies in this neck of the woods.

Third: "The release" that was sent out was only forwarded to a few — basically members of the organization that were not able to attend. Sending the "release" was not Slappy's job. It was just a courtesy to the other members.

Pretty much, the sports departments at most of the state's traditional media outlets received the "release" since they are all members of the organization that hosts the event. The blog/site that took the info, copied and pasted and claimed the work as its own is not a member, so the release was not sent to them.

In other words, the blog/site janked Slappy's stuff — since the "release" is really not a press release.

Unfortunately, this crap happens all the time. And sadly, there is very little that can be done.

 

Well said, SS...
When I posted this, yeah, I thought the site had rewritten the lead and janked the stuff passing it off as its own,
But the site didn't jank the stuff. The lead was rewritten, the bulk left untouched including quotes and sent to the site by someone who had provided copy to them during the season; the way the lead was changed should have told me who it was. The site thought it was this person's work.
It has since changed the attribution, which was what bothered me in the first place.

 

It's not that big of a deal if slappy is writing copy for all of these other papers to use.

 

In the past, most papers would've sent someone to the event. However, the venue changed this year and seating was limited. He also didn't send the story to every paper in the state. Only the few that were unable to attend.

I think all the pointless rambling has drowned the point of this post. In our state, cheap, shady sports blogs/.coms are popping up all over the place. Every significant town has one or two. Now, I'm not saying that all bloggers are lazy. I'm just saying the bloggers in my neck of the woods are.

For example: A sports blogger in my town is notorious for stealing copy from our Web site/print edition, changing a FEW words and posting it as their own work without giving attribution to my paper. Is this ethical? Absolutely not.

How do I know this .com is stealing our work? Well, we caught the site "borrowing" our copy last year. During basketball season, a gamer was posted on our Web site before all corrections had been made for the next day's print edition. In this gamer, the score was reversed. While we caught the mistake before it went to press, the error was on our Web site. And ironically, a similar story with the exact same mistakes — there was more than one error in the story that was accidentally posted on our site — was on the .com's site.

The good news is that we realized the erroneous story had been posted on our Web site a few minutes after the section had been put to bed, so the mistakes were corrected before we left the office that night. However, our pirating friends at the .com were not aware of any mistakes in the copy, so…well, I think everyone gets the drift.

While some of these .coms are legit, there's also a a lot of fly-by-night "media outlets" out there. Will organizations like this put us out of business? Probably not. But at the same time, it's annoying when someone takes your work and claims it as their own.

 

Yeah... wait....

 

Dammit, I knew we shouldn't have moved across the county line. I feel so ... insignificant.

 

Honestly, I think your editor needs to have a talk with this footballbullshitblog.org web site and tell them "Write your own copy and do your 'job'".

 

My editor had nothing to do with it... for lack of a better term, I was the pool reporter...

And Dixie, you can move across the county line... am thinkin 25 or 64... maybe 8... that would be good for you...

 

Slap, why do you hate variety in the gene pool?

 

There are no ripples in those pools -- and it shows