Plagiarism or not?

Local radio station has started a new Web site. It's basically an online newspaper, complete with obits and marriage announcements.

But the "stories" are just one or two paragraphs long. And obviously cribbed from our newspaper.

Complain or leave it alone?

 

Do they have ads? If so, they're profiting from your copyrighted content. Tough to go after them if they're paraphrasing, but if their site is essentially a cut/paste from yours, I think that stretches the boundaries of fair use.

 

Honestly, I think the obits might be more off limits than anything. Are they word-for-word obits from your paper?

 

Sorry, the obits are submitted and not lifted from us.

My complaint is about news and sports. We covered a summer league baseball game yesterday. Nobody from there was at the park. Yet today, there's a two graf summary of the game.

 

I think it should be looked into.

 

Unethical, sure, but nothing you can do about it. You still can't copyright facts.

 

Welcome to every radio station website ever.

Just start running ads that say "____ Newspaper, so good, the competition takes our stories"

 

Unless they're using your stories verbatim, you can't really call it plagiarism. Unethical and scummy, perhaps, but not plagiarism. As RickStain said, you don't own the facts.

But nothing wrong with running it past the lawyers; if you can assemble enough proof that they're lifting your stories, it might be worth a cease and desist letter.

(If you really want to prove it, misspell a name or change a small detail. Gets 'em every time.)

 

My vote for post of the month.

 

At the small town daily I used to work at, the local station would lift everything from us. I would write a feature, and the sports announcer would flat-out read it, including the quotes, without attributing it to the paper.

We complained a few times, the radio station ignored it. So, our editor wrote a nasty editorial ripping the station, ending it by daring them to read it on the air.

They didn't.

 

I would ask them to kindly attribute where they get their information. You might be pleasantly surprised.

 

I don't think I've ever been pleasantly surprised by a radio station's ethics. I guess it could happen.