Weblog Sin Pies

By Charley Daniels

About a month and a half ago Frosty at Collider.com posted an article about how the two major entertainment trades, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, were snubbing websites like Collider by not giving them credit for breaking stories first.

When will Variety and The Hollywood Reporter Credit Online Websites for Breaking a Story?

“Time and again I’ve watched as either myself, or one of my fellow online journalists (cause that’s what we are) break a story only to be reported sometimes days later in Variety or The Reporter with no mention the news was already online.”

I’ve been meaning to write something about this since I first saw it (I found out because someone from MTV e-mailed us asking for a comment on the story), and although I’m decidedly biased in this case, I’m totally sympathetic to the plight of the online journalist, so I don’t think my status as a THR employee should immediately disqualify me from an opinion.

Part of being an honest journalist in the online age is crediting sources that tipped you off to a story by linking to them, and I’ve had my share of arguments among colleagues about what exactly that means. To me, it’s simple. If a reporter reads something on a website somewhere that leads him or her to a story, there ought to be some mention of the source in the article, particularly in the online version, where the source site should get a link.

The real question is, how can you know the source of any article? And the answer is, you can’t, and that’s where the Collider post veers from a worthwhile discussion topic to, well, something else entirely.

Frosty said:

Ultimately, I just don’t think it’s right for major news publications to not credit others when they have the same story.

Having the same story is not the same as stealing a story, regardless of whether one follows the other. You see, just because you broke the story doesn’t mean that your site is where the Variety or THR reporter got the news. When a source tells a reporter something, that reporter is not obligated to do a search and include in the story a list of sites that already had the news. It’s probably a good idea to do a search to gauge the newsworthiness of the lead, but just because something was posted on Collider or Ain’t It Cool or where ever doesn’t mean it’s lost its newsworthiness for the average THR or Variety audience. And you don’t typically credit a source that you find has the same story if you’ve done the reporting and found out yourself. It’s the difference between “I got it there” and “I saw it there.” And it’s a big difference. When do you credit a source? When that’s where the news came from or that’s who tipped you off to the story.

The part that got me the most is that in Frosty’s post there are specific articles mentioned and linked to, and the sum total of the evidence against the trade reporters is that some website had the story first. That’s very dangerous. It offends me as a co-worker and as an online journalist myself. Traditional media fogies love to rail against new media news sources by saying that we jump to conclusions, don’t get our facts straight. Let’s not give them more ammunition.

The bottom line is, Frosty’s quest may be a noble one, but no one can be certain about the sources of the stories that are being spotlighted. Calling out other reporters without citing some concrete evidence doesn’t help your cause.

There are so many levels to this — standards of journalism, target audience, editorial judgment, newsroom culture, print cycles — that are night and day different between online, consumer-focused journalism and primarily print, industry-focused journalism. And while I agree that there are certainly cases where websites have been snubbed and there are certainly cases where sources weren’t properly credited, I believe that a solid majority of the times that you see a story in Variety or THR that seems to be following an online version without crediting it, it can be explained by the reporter getting the information independently, rather than lifting it from the site that reported it first.

And it’s probably not a good idea to start accusing people of stealing unless you have some proof.

photo: rickhanz