Curmudgeonliness, with a twist
BlogNetNews pointed me to the curmudgeonly ending way, way down in Jody Rosen’s rather obsessive dogging of some freesheet hack’s gross acts of plagiarism:
But perhaps the Bulletin is merely on-trend—or even ahead of its time. The Drudge Report, the Huffington Post, and Real Clear Politics have made names and money by sifting through RSS feeds; Tina Brown and Barry Diller are preparing the launch of their own news aggregator. Mike Ladyman and company may simply be bringing guerilla-style 21st-century content aggregation to 20th-century print media: publishing the Napster of newspapers.
So he equates wholesale plagiarism with linking. Whew, that’s somebody who sure doesn’t understand the link economy.
Jody, I confess to a brazen act of theft: I linked to you. Twice. Shame on me.
But here’s curmudgeonliness with a reverse twist Jonathan Isaby, outgoing political diarist of the Telegraph, complains to the Press Gazette that all this constant demand for news, news, news from the “ulta-pressured environment” of the 24-hour, multimedia newsroom means reporters just don’t have time to sift through the record of Parliament and find news. So his response: He’s leaving to go work for … a blog.
: UPDATE: I got email from Jody Rosen saying that he was being ironic, making a joke about the paper’s “unorthodox ‘aggregation’ practices.” Hmmm. I didn’t hear it. One of us needs to adjust our ironometer. I’ll tweak mine up a bit. And I’m relieved that Slate won’t be launching a jihad on Google News. I also got Rosen’s gender wrong, which really makes me look like the loser. So I’ll skulk off now, growling like a curmudgeon.
Tags: curmudgeons, journalism, newspapers
August 7th, 2008 at 7:53 am
[...] just one paragraph too many (that’s already angered at least one blogger) in an otherwise edifying exposé, which I will link to (er, plagiarize) here again. Just [...]
August 7th, 2008 at 9:31 am
I don’t buy the irony excuse. You don’t stick a publication’s name in a story about rampant and unrepentant plagiarism and then say, “oh, it was a joke” any more than you stick a real person’s name in a story about prolific and unrepentant child abusers and say, ha, kidding.
August 7th, 2008 at 9:40 am
“One of us needs to adjust our ironometer.”
You.
His point was perfectly clear to me– we’re entering a world where everybody mixmasters everybody else’s content to create new content, the clear line between a scumbag plagiariser and an original creator is being blurred. Their crime was slapping a new byline on it, not mixing it up.
August 7th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Thank you! I read that article last night and was struck by how ridiculous Rosen was being. Since he considers linking plagiarism, would he rather people not link to his piece?
I was also struck by his seeming ignorance that a lot of content at the Huffpo is written for it.
August 8th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
[...] likening of well-respected blogs to a plagiarist newspaper has angered many. One blogger called it curmudgeonly, another hinted that linking was the antidote to plagiarism in journalism and still another called [...]
August 11th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
I got it, although if one isn’t familiar with the names Rosen drops, one might be a little confused. I think he’s assuming an informed readership, a generally safe assumption for Slate. More so than for BuzzMachine, I daresay.