Thursday, February 11, 2010
Bad Form
I do not know what arrangement the (Greensboro, NC) News & Record has with the (Raleigh, NC) News & Observer regarding the N&R's practice of pasting N&O articles in their entirety on the N&R web site. One assumes the N&O has given their blessings, but doing so without a link to the original source is bad form.
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Roch: Stories from the N&O, Charlotte Observer, News & Record, Winston-Salem Journal and other large and small papers in N.C. (and nationally) move on the McClatchy-Tribune wire at www.mctdirect.com.
ReplyDeleteWe subscribe to the MCT feed, and use stories from it regularly. Those stories that appear on the N-R.com Web site include the name of the original publication in the byline and (MCT) in the dateline.
We link to an original story cited in Associated Press stories because the AP versions are such stripped down versions of the original.
MCT stories are word-for-word versions of the original, minus any editing we do on our end, so there's no real point in linking. They're also clearly sourced so people know exactly where they come from.
— John Newsom
Whoops ... I should have ID'd myself as being from the N&R. I post a bunch of those stories on the site, though not this particular one.
ReplyDelete— John Newsom, N&R
Thanks for the comment, John. It is contrary to the spirit and function of the web not to link to the original source, whether word for word or edited on your end.
ReplyDeleteThe newspaper version of doing that is to credit the original source (as we do on the web versions) and even provide a directory of other articles from that paper/web service we've run. They do the same thing. The stories can move on the wire before there is a final (or even initial) web version at their site to point to, as happens with ours.
ReplyDeleteIt's a more or less industry-wide practice when it comes to wire stuff. I'm not sure if it's bad form if everyone agrees on the practice. I'd do what you were suggesting if it were my blog, but the parties here have asked for and agreed to something else as part of a business arrangement, which is their right. If people come to my house I don't tell them they have to take their shoes off because my aunt considers it bad form for you to leave them on and everybody knows that.
There are plenty of valid criticisms of the N&R - and of our web site. This one just happens to be a difference of custom (and in this case agreed business practice). Both really accomplish the same thing - no one is confused as to where the information comes from, because it's credited, and the people reading it get the information.
Part of the problem for newspapers and the web, the N&R no exception, is that they try to fight against the very things that make the web exciting. One of those problems was their attempts to bring a "walled garden" mentality to their web sites.
ReplyDeleteArgue all you want that the practice is okay. Yes it is--and inferior.
I'm not disagreeing with you on principle.
ReplyDeleteI think I would agree it was inferior -- many newspaper website things are -- if providing a link to the exact same story on a different paper's site (which is sometimes not even actually possible at the time they hit the wire and certainly would not be with many stories running in the N&R daily) gave the reader any new information.
But it doesn't.
It's the same story, just in a different place. As a consumer of news I don't really care which site I read the story on -- one of the great things about news on the web and one thing many newspapers hate because, as you say, they'd prefer people to only get the info from the place they want to give it to them, in the manner they choose.
It'd be a walled garden of sorts if you could read the first graph but then had to click to a proprietary web site and read it in the spot where it originated (if possible).
But you can read the whole thing from any paper that uses the wire service. And the papers who provide that content get the same service from all the others. It's not a system designed to give people less information or make it harder for them to get to it -- it allows them to get all the information where they're already reading it, credits its source and even allows you to click on a link that takes you to all the other stories from that source.
Then, if you want to go to that paper or service's web site and read other things, you can. You've been provided with the information you'd need to do that - including the paper or service's name and the byline (where applicable). The only thing you don't have is a hyperlink taking you there - which, as I've said, would not necessarily be possible at many papers because their stories don't post to the web the instant they're put on the wire.
I agree that more stories should be going on the web more often with as many hyper-links as possible and in a perfect world there'd never be a glitch like this. But in an industry where there are fewer people and there is less money every day I think we sometimes have to do the best we can (which in this case seems perfectly fine to me as a consumer of many, many news web sites) and pick our battles.
There are many, many things we need to fix about journalism and the web before we get this far down on the list.
Joe,
ReplyDeleteThere are many reason why a reader might want to click through to the original story:
- To see who wrote it and how to contact him.
- To comment on it at its source.
- To see the original version unedited by the local source.
There are no good reasons for not providing a link, just paternal excuses.
Those would be good reasons. But the N&R isn't not providing a link out of bad manners or thick-headout the web. The existing system, from the papers who provide the content (and when they post on their own websites) to the wire service itself, isn't set up to do it.
ReplyDeleteThat may need to be redsigned from the ground up, but that would have to happen beyond our newsroom.
That should read "thick-headedness."
ReplyDeleteOh, well if it's the system, never mind.
ReplyDeleteSystems that suck should be fixed - of course you have to sort of triage all of the many things that need to be fixed.
ReplyDeleteMy point, I suppose, is that it's not about one local paper having bad form or not getting it -- it's about the system that's used at most daily newspapers being a certain way and our paper not really being able to change it by ourselves because it depends on a lot of moving pieces we don't control.
I think we do plenty wrong. But this one's bigger than us.
Joe,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the back and forth. You know, I hope, that I respect your opinions, but on this one I think my bottom line is going to be that if the N&R finds adding a hyperlink to external stories to be beyond their control, then we need to pick up the pace on the triage.
I appreciate the back-and-forth too.
ReplyDeleteI don't disagree with your conclusion -- that it would be helpful to have a hyperlink. But having seen how things go onto the wire and what the process of creating a story and putting it up online and having them pulled from the wire actually looks like, I think it's less a priority than many other things we should be fixing - online and otherwise.
I think one of the things that creates conflict between journalists and bloggers is the emotional reaction - and I admit it's emotional, not always or even usually logical - that we have to reading people who have never worked in newspapers concluding that we're lazy or stupid or have our heads up our asses because we're doing something this way instead of that and they can't see why.
Not that those people aren't sometimes right.
But often everyone in the equation would be better served by someone asking: "Why does this work this way? Could it be improved? How?" -- rather than concluding that it must be bad manners or a misunderstanding of how the web (or a newspaper on the web) does and should operate.
I'm certainly not one of these guys who says, for instance, "You've never been in the military, so your opinion about war isn't valid."
The opinions of people who consume media are always worth hearing for people who create media.
But with the industry where it is, from the local level to the largest papers in the county, it can be a little frustrating to see before you all of the huge problems of the industry and to know that people many levels above you are going to have to address them and to also be reading people complaining about what I think are comparatively small problems.
But it's not personal and I'm not being contrary to be contrary. It's hard not to have the conversation emotionally when it's your livelihood, but we should be having the conversation.
To put this in some context. I went to the N&R main page and clicked through to six or seven stories. Not one of them had any links to external sites -- not even the story about online dating.
ReplyDeleteThat, to my mind, is a different thing and a more valid complaint.
ReplyDeleteAs a reporter I'm only occasionally the person who adds the final version of text to the web - it often gets edited after I'm gone. But when I post things that are breaking - like the recent hotel lawsuit story - I will include a hyperlink when it's applicable (as it was in that story).
That's something that can be controlled entirely in-house.