Here’s the deal, Mr Murdoch: If you stop lifting my content, I’ll pay for yours
Earlier this week, I gave Fairfax something a kicking for nicking videos from their original source.
They quickly responded with a return to what sounds to me like a much fairer policy.
So it’s amusing to see that News Ltd seems to be straying into the same kind of territory – only this one is a bit more personal.
On Wednesday night, I pulled a late one. I spent seven or eight hours reading through all of the recent rulings by the Advertising Standards Board. I’ve still not caught up on my sleep properly.
But it was worth it. There was some good stuff:
- There was a bunch of mad complaints to the ASB .
- There was their decision not to censure the redhead-baiting ‘Don’t Be A Dickhead” road safety ads.
- There was the story about Choice – of all people – publishing an ad featuring somebody inside a fridge.
- There was another story I’ll be writing shortly.
- And there was the quirky tale of how Telstra’s Keyboard Cat had attracted the ire of animal lovers. For those who don’t know, Keyboard Cat is something of a YouTube meme and has actually been dead for years. I published that one today.
Then this afternoon, I spotted a tweet: “Gotta love News.com.au’s rehash of @mumbrella’s Keyboard cat complaint story!”
And a similar comment on Mumbrella.
Sure enough, they had a story that went up about two hours ago as I write: “Keyboard Cat rubs animal lover the wrong way”
It’s already picking up a few comments – not surpisingly as it’s currently occupying much of their home page..
Of course, it could all be just of a coincidence. But I suspect otherwise.
You see, I’d fallen behind on checking the Advertising Standards Board site as they’d changed the way they displayed their determinations and I’d overlooked them. That ruling was actually made just over a month ago. But until today, nobody had written about it.
It seems a big coincidence that news.com.au’s journalist – bylined as Helen Davidson – would stumble upon the story independently at precisely the same moment as me.
Particularly as it was one of several dozen rulings. You’d think she’d have picked another ruling rather than this relatively trivial one.
Even if Mumbrella was the source, legally of course, it’s fine. The copy’s not been lifted. She’s even taken it on a little by getting a quote from the ASB. No copyright has been breached.
But of course, this is precisely the problem that newspapers face in trying to protect their content behind paywalls. How do they protect the hours of research that went into their story and stop somebody from simply repeating the key fact minutes later? Rewriting the story once it’s been dug out is the easy part.
In my case reading every single bloody case to find the interesting story was the bit that took time and effort.
The major newspaper groups have been arguing that they need precisely this sort of protection from people like me.
By a funny coincidence, it’s one year this week since John Hartigan , the chairman of News Ltd, turned his fire on Mumbrella during a keynote speech:
“Then there are the news commentary sites, like The Huffington Post, Newser and the Daily Beast and in Australia sites like Crikey and Mumbrella. Most of the content on these sites is commentary and opinion on media coverage produced by the major outlets. These sites are covered in links to wire stories or mainstream mastheads. Typically, less than 10% of their content is original reporting.
“Almost anyone can start one of these sites, with very little capital, no training or qualifications. Then there are the bloggers. In return for their free content, we pretty much get what we’ve paid for – something of such limited intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance. Like Keating’s famous “all tip and no iceberg”, it could be said that the blogosphere is all eyeballs and no insight.”
(I put my case in return here.)
By the way, many News Ltd journos take a different approach. I can think of a Daily Telegraph reporter who has used a Mumbrella story as a source more than once and always been diligent in citing us. The SMH’s print journos have generally given us a fair ride too.
Ironically, it doesn’t take much to keep us online folk happy. A link to the original piece at the end of the story is all it takes (you can still do it with this story if you like, Helen).
And as the tweet above demonstrates, if you do lift without attribution, you get found out in minutes.
Yet there is still something about the culture of journalism (and I do count myself in that) which makes us resist admitting to our readers that a story is not original. Even though there’s no good reason for not doing so.
But it does make it kind of hard for Rupert Murdoch to argue that original reporting should get additional legal protection.
The Times pay wall was turned on a few hours ago. Good luck with that.
Tim Burrowes
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
Linkedin
Great piece Tim, and thanks for the linkage 😉
Think if anything you’ve been a bit soft on this one. Clearly a rehash without attribution or linkage and as you succinctly point out – not a good sign for the future of paid news!
I’ve seen it a few times, but this one (and because of the level of research you’d clearly gone into) stood out like a cat in a dog kennel.
User ID not verified.
It really is decidedly old-school thinking to “forget” to mention sources. The funny thing about the web is that everyone benefits from quoting the source.
User ID not verified.
Ha, you probably need to catch up on some sleep now
User ID not verified.
Oh boo hoo – newspapers have followed up each other’s stories forever – the first thing a cos does in the morning is check the competition for yarns to catch up on
User ID not verified.
“all tip and no iceberg” Can I source that from you – or should I ask Paul?
User ID not verified.
Best stay in the wading pool young Tim, there’s a bit of splashing in the ocean
User ID not verified.
Good piece, Tim, but as Joe mentions above, this sort of thing has been going on since newspapers began – if someone’s got a good story and you don’t, you need to get it too (and you won’t see the Herald Sun giving acknowledgment to The Age for breaking it first, or vice versa).
If anything, it’s a compliment to this site that the mainstream media is paying attention to what you’re doing (though I’m sure it’s still frustrating when you’ve done the legwork and someone else piggybacks on it, but that’s journalism).
Hartigan’s a member of the old guard who has no understanding of new media, the same with most upper management in our big media companies – he probably barely looks at his own sites, much less yours.
Your main point about pay walls is spot on. “Exclusive” news content loses its exclusivity as soon as it is published. Most big stories broken by newspapers (such as this week’s World Cup bid scandal) I hear about first on ABC radio when I wake up. By the time I am looking at a newspaper, I know all the facts already.
One more factor in all this – will the pay walls stop journalists following up other outlets stories? Given Fairfax’s penny-pinching culture, I highly doubt they’re going to spring for subscriptions to News Ltd’s sites for all their journalists once the pay walls come in.
User ID not verified.
It may have been going on since the dawn of time but I think Tim’s point is that it is difficult for Publishers to adopt a position that scalds anyone for taking any of their content when they are practicing the same way. It doesn’t happen all the time, but there is definite cross-over of news on each publisher: Fairfax newspaper report, News Limited newspapers report, NEWS.com.au says etc etc. Nicely spotted.
User ID not verified.
It’s a publicly released report. You just took the time/initiative to read it first. It’s commendable, but that’s life – you don’t have exclusive acess to the content/source. Everyone does – it’s a public document.
If the Herald Sun finds a document on the internet, and writes the first “exclusive” story on it, The Age/ABC/commercials don’t credit the Hun in their follows, they credit the report – the report is “the source”, not the Hun.
It’s the same as if you reported a press release first. Mumbrella wouldn’t be credited as the source, other media organisations just get the original press release and write it up or chase their own angles from there.
However, if you had procured a leaked document or some such, then by all means, other media orgs should be crediting you – but only because if they can’t source the document themselves. If that is the case, then you ARE the source and should be credited as such.
User ID not verified.
The ASB complaints were featured in a big piece on p3 of the SMH today – they gave full credit to Mumbrella.
User ID not verified.