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So you've been blatantly ripped off ... what do you do now

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Rhody31, Mar 24, 2009.

  1. Riddick

    Riddick Active Member

    I actually worked with a reporter, while I was at a major metro, who stole a lot of the information for his stories from the smaller daily in the area and didn't see anything wrong with it.
    Maybe he was right, though. I ended up unemployed for for six months while he landed a gig as a college beat writer.
     
  2. cyclingwriter

    cyclingwriter Active Member

    At least it wasn't a Web site that ripped off your stuff and then spent the rest of the day complaining about how bad you are.
     
  3. pseudo

    pseudo Well-Known Member

    On three separate occasions during the just-concluded hoops season, I asked the home coach about a specific play or stat during my postgame interviews, thinking of using it for the lede ... only to read essentially the same quote in the dailies the next day, even though I was the only reporter there. (I write for a weekly.) Annoying, to be sure. But unless I ask the coach to keep it our little secret when he calls in the score (and I can just see myself doing that), too bad for me.

    Riddick, sounds like the SE at one of the local dailies. He considers the Internet his wire service, merrily cutting and pasting without attribution -- including a story on a local ballplayer I wrote from a one-on-one interview. That one earned a phone call from our ME.
     
  4. I Digress

    I Digress Guest

    So, after the last newspaper folds, will the radio and TV news-readers go silent, unable to generate facts?
     
  5. RickStain

    RickStain Well-Known Member

    They'll just read press releases.
     
  6. I Digress

    I Digress Guest

    Part of me thinks that's even worse....
     
  7. EE94

    EE94 Guest

    they don't call it "rip and read" for nothing'
     
  8. J-School Blue

    J-School Blue Member

    It sucks but there's not much you can do about it. Particularly if they just reported the bare facts from your article, or used your story to go do their own reporting

    If they're reading stuff like ledes or color bits straight from your copy on the air with not even a courtesy "a local publication reported" attribution, I do think that's another matter. The business reporter at my last paper successfully got the editor to call in to the station and bitch when that happened to a story she'd worked on. Albeit, that was an indepth feature that took her a couple weeks to write. I'm not even sure how much good it did, but it was nice that the call was made.
     
  9. Tom Petty

    Tom Petty Guest

    no, and you also weren't crying.
     
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