How Gawker Ripped Off My Newspaper Story

Ok, for the sake of discussion, say newspapers are dead and gone in 5 years. What happens to places like gawker? Will they go out and do their own investigating? Certain blogs have some "real" sources, but they seem to rely more on traditional media for the base story.

As far as I know, the whole nature of blogs like them are to take an existing story and put their own spin on it. I enjoy various blogs (even some in the gawker stable), but if and when newspaper die off, what will they do for content?

I think it's a reasonable rant. Look at it this way: which one - the WP reporter, or Gawker - has created more value? Which one has added (slightly, as in all these things) more to the sum total of human knowledge?

Perhaps economics of the former (Washington Post) model is on its way out. But if it is, might we all not be the poorer for it?

Washington Post pays for all the time and hard work to put together a real story. Gawker reduces it to snark, collects the ad money.

This is a problem. Real journalism is in big economic trouble.

If there were ever an opportunity for some entrepreneurial problem-solving, this is it.

http://paulgraham.com/good.html

This is an opportunity for the Washington Post actually. They can cut out the middleman (Gawker) and supply a slim version of the same story. This would let them cover multiple "angles" and recoup their expenses by having all the ad revenue coming to a Washington Post-owned publisher.

I used the title tag (How Gawker Ripped Off My Newspaper Story) instead of the actual title (The Death of Journalism [Gawker Edition]) as I found the latter to be too sensationalistic.

The weakest and central part of the article:

"More readers are better than fewer, of course. But those referring links -- while essential to our current business model -- aren't doing much, ultimately, to stop our potential slide into layoffs and further contraction."

Not financially helping--arguable in itself--the Washington post is not equal to financially hindering it.

"Worse, some media experts believe that Gawker and its ilk, with their relatively low overhead, might be depressing online ad revenue across the board. That makes it harder for news-gathering operations to recoup their expenses."

This is simply conjecture--a shame since this is the crux of his argument. I could equally say Gawker may be giving the WP article more page hits (something he admits), and thus revenue, and certainly more general public exposure. And in return for this service, Gawker gets ad revenue itself.

After these two weak points he then goes on to ask how we can save newspapers from online blogs and non-newspaper news sites, without proving these are hindering newspapers.

This whole argument seems very similar to the music industry's argument that online piracy is destroying music. Studies have shown, however, that piracy can actually increase music sales. And so it's not clear cut that blogging and non-newspaper news sites are hindering traditional newspapers.

We need to prove blogs and non-newspaper new sites are causing newspapers' decline before moving on to ask how we should stop these menaces to traditional newspapers.

Bottomless contempt for the genuine concern from people about how the internet will affect their livelihood is not the best way to encourage support and appreciation for the value that tech (and its creators) can generate.

After hundreds of articles posted here about old media struggling, followed by thousands of comments deriding the old for not realizing how old and lame they are, its time to think of ways to ease this transition rather than being contemptuous as it guts another industry.

It is a reason for concern the prospect of losing real journalism. I have stopped using adblockers. Please stop linking to the print version of articles.

Isn't that gawker media & other similar blogs always do (more or less)?

To say that this is a lame piece is an understatement. He complains that although Gawker linked to his piece twice or more times, and drove significant traffic to his article, that somehow the online world is driving newspapers to the wall. He complains that the extra traffic gave The Post no extra revenue? Oh c'mon, get real, whose fault is that? The real kicker is the fact that newspapers and the MSN in general are all engaged in a constant war to steal each others content and make it their own, they've been doing it for decades. And that's a fact. This article is pathetic, and really shows the desperate state of the MSM.

Washington Post journalist writes about a coach who helps integrate younger people and their tech expectations into the workplace.

Gawker writes about it.

Journalist (well, Editor first) gets peeved, and writes a massive rant at Gawker and technology in his profession.

If I were to tweet this, it would be #irony.