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Nov
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During my journalism training days, we once joked what journalism would have looked like had the internet not been invented. I facetiously commented that some reporters would have to find a method other than using Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V.
Joking as I may have been, with staff numbers down and pressure to produce rolling content on the up, there’s a lot more churnalism and reliance on syndicated agency content. Much as journalists would like to be out and about, exposing wrongdoing and reporting original content, modern demands make this kind of hard.
As such, there’s a lot of copy and pasting from other sources. If one paper, radio or other media source carries a story, others will take the main line and reproduce this, namechecking the original.
Actually, this isn’t a new thing. It’s sort of vital for the news industry to exist. One outlet will look slow if they’re not leading with the line obtained by their rivals, so often they’ll take the main points and rewrite into their own news story. It’s pretty common and generally accepted practice in the news industry. Whether it’s a practice you feel is proper journalism is another question (although it’s quite a skill to be able to rewrite agency copy well).
Where it isn’t accepted is in the blogging community, which is much more open to quoting, attributing and, most importantly, linking back to the original source. As somebody who’s been blogging in various guises since in 2003, this is nearly second nature to me and something I’ve carried into online journalism without any problem.
But when two very different worlds collide, there will be problems, and this was the case earlier this week. Gav Stone, who writes the specialist Les Rosbifs blog, focusing on the careers on English footballers abroad, pulled off something off a coup by securing an interview with former England, FC Twente and Wolsburg manager Steve McClaren about his time managing in Europe.
Let’s just emphasise this. A fully independent blogger who edits his site as a hobby and no typical mainstream access secured an interview with a reasonably recent England manager and who is still active in the game today. Unless it’s part of a PR event, these type of interviews are unusual on independent blogs and rarer still to be in such depth.
Understandably Gav was, to put it mildly, a bit miffed when a chunk of his interview turned up a few days later as a lifted and rewritten news story (“Macca: Twenty joy my career high) on Sky Sports, Team Talk and other sites that Sky had syndicated the story to.
After emailing and receiving no response, Gav called them out on Twitter. The response from the journalists on these sites was a mixture of defensive, patronising, a tad arrogant and one that showed very little understanding of the web.
Chief among Gavin’s complaints was the lack of a link back to the source of the story. Team Talk et al had credited the interview to Les Rosbifs (although with no explanation as to who or what the site was) and hadn’t linked back, and hadn’t asked permission to use the quotes in the first place. What started off as a slightly miffed request from a blogger has escalated into a stage where lawyers are being consulted.
To my mind, there are four different aspects to this: the moral and ethical and legal implications of Sky’s actions, the issue of proper crediting, the issue of hyperlinking, and the general attitude of a mainstream media publication towards an independent blog.
Morals, ethics, and legality
Legally, Sky were probably just about on the right side of the law (although my own copyright knowledge is somewhat hazy). The fair dealing exception, whereby content is used for comment or rewritten is very common in journalism, and largely expected among media organisations – getting a paper or news bulletin out would be nigh-on impossible without it.
It’s also worth pointing out Sky didn’t, technically, steal the interview. The articles – now removed (in itself curious given the robust defence of their methods offered by Team Talk members on Twitter) – did lift several lengthy quotes from Les Rosbifs. However, the news angle was changed, there are some (admittedly, not many) original words in the pieces and much of the context and depth provided by the original interview wouldn’t be apparent without reading the full original piece.
So, setting legal concerns to one side (and it would be interesting to see if any lawyers think Sky overstepped the mark and the piece was problematic legally, the moral and ethical concerns still come into play. And largely politeness too.
Had Sky approached Gavin for permission, it’s likely that the response and conversation would have been much more amicable. But that in itself causes problems. As Tom Phillips commented on my Google+ (subscribers only, sorry), permission is an odd thing. Many bloggers quote from the mainstream press liberally. Should they contact the journalist or publication every time they want to write their own article based around somebody else’s work. The idea seems somewhat absurd when turned around, even if it is good manners.
But it still somehow feels wrong, ethically. This isn’t a writer working in the cut and thrust of journalism, this is a blogger who has done this work in his spare time, and now sees somebody else profiting from the work he has done. The attitude of some of the journalists working for Sky was far from classy and left something to be desired. Gav wasn’t playing with the big boys, who was pursuing an interest.
One final point here. Gavin secured the interview with McClaren on the basis that he was not mainstream press. When McClaren’s quotes (perhaps to be expected, and perhaps a small touch of naivety on both McClaren and Gavin’s parts) found their way onto Sky, that hurts the relationship built up by Gavin.
Relationships between the media and many football figures are touchy at best. By trampling over Les Rosbifs’ interview, Sky have strained that relationship between McClaren, the press and bloggers just that little bit further.
In the credits
From Sky / Team Talk’s point of view, they’d credited Les Rosbifs. From their perspective, that was it. The credit, though, isn’t entirely clear who or what Les Rosbifs is. The credit simply reads “In an interview with Les Rosbifs…”.
Be honest here. Unless you were a football blogger or happened to know Gav personally, would you know what Les Rosbifs was? For all was made clear, it could have just as easily been a French cooking blog that happened to have interviewed McClaren about nutrition, and wider football issues.
Gav himself has said there’s been no real spike in traffic and other articles that have appeared on other sites haven’t even carried Les Rosbifs’ name. That credit may work fine for, say, The Mirror, but again, feels disingenuous in the context of Gavin’s site. Should you wish to find the whole interview, there’s no indication how to go about this (and remember, many readers are lazy).
But where the issue really becomes important is that of hyperlinking.
The links effect
The hyperlinking issue is where we can see clear effects, differences between Gav and Sky, and, on the part of Team Talk, a complete misunderstanding of how the internet works.
Mark Holmes, one of Team Talk’s journalists, first told Gav on Twitter that Team Talk knew how to credit properly, but then went onto express amazement as to why anybody would ever request a link to the source material in a post. This is somewhat staggering from an online journalist.
I’ve written in the past how hyperlinks are one of the most valuable pieces of currency on the internet. From the most basic point of view, it’s just good practice to link back to your sources – it provides an easy way for readers to find the original in one easy click, shows how much has been taken and is an open and transparent way of acknowledging original material.
Adding a link is quick, easy (and wouldn’t, unlike Mark Holmes claimed, add 10% more work to Team Talk’s day) and good practice, and helps deliver more traffic to the original site. Personally, I’d like to see all agency syndication include links to sources in their copy – and it’s up to the site to decide if they want to link or not.
But this is just a small part of the benefits of linking back to the source. Had a site like Sky or Team Talk, with a high trust ranking in Google, linked back to the original article, then this in itself would provide an excellent virtual form of payment to Gav and help boost the SEO for his site and especially the McClaren article.
By not linking to the source, this becomes more of an issue. Some time after publication, the Sky article ranked higher than the Les Rosbifs article in Google. Not only had Sky lifted a chunk of the interview, it was now benefitting in search terms. Even entering LEs Rosbifs into search saw Gav’s site rank lower.
Mark Chalcraft at 2nd Yellow has written about the implications of duplicated content for bloggers in terms of SEO and Google ranking. What, to a big site, may seem like an insignificant link actually has big implications helping deliver hits to smaller, independent blogs (I’m personally of the view that all sites should link to source material, unless there’s a compelling reason not to).
This is why, to me, the issue of crediting online shouldn’t just be a throwaway line about the origin. It should be clear, transparent and include links wherever possible. Not only does this benefit the reader, it benefits and rewards original material with minimum of effort.
But you’re just a blogger…
And this all comes back to the original attitude of several Sky journalists, who seemed amazed that the blogger they’d taken the content was rather persistent in asking for a link.
To say Gavin wasn’t being professional and should be more polite when asking for a link back to content they’d taken from his site in the first place is not just patronising, it’s incredibly arrogant. Without the legwork Gavin put in, there would be no story at all.
We’re frequently told the boundaries between blogging and journalism have broken down. This is true to an extent. When everybody from the BBC to ITV to the Guardian to the Telegraph blogs, you can safely say it’s a valid medium.
The boundaries between bloggers and journalists, though, have still, if this incident is anything to go by, most definitely not broken down. Gavin’s interview is a well researched and written piece of journalism, although he’s not a journalist. The rewrite is only tenuously journalism insofar as it’s published on a journalistic platform. Yet it is the latter who are seen as the gatekeeper still.
Team Talk and Sky will always get the bigger hits, but that’s not what this is about. Les Rosbifs is niche, and makes a virtue of this. The work is just as valid this way (and, if anything, more impressive given it is written outside of a day job). There is a hierarchy in terms of page views, yes, but not so much in status.
Should bloggers expect to be compensated when their work is lifted? Debatable. I’d say proper, fully-linked crediting isn’t a bad payment.
Should bloggers be asked to have their quotes used elsewhere? Again, possibly. These aren’t, strictly speaking, journalistic publications. There is no established culture of lifting and rewriting content, thankfully. There is more of a culture of openness, transparency and respect for source material and this is something journalists would be well advised to be mindful of when using independent blogs as a source.
Was it stealing? In my view, no. I have nothing against the practice per se, even if I don’t necessarily like how lifting is a commonplace tactic in the industry (copy and paste is, after all, hardly journalism). It’s a necessary evil, sadly.
But even though it isn’t stealing, in the legal sense of the word, it is, overall, poor form, and reflects badly on Sky and Team Talk, both for the initial perceived transgression and subsequent attitude towards the complaint. What could have been sorted quickly and easily escalated into something much more unpleasant. Social media crises have been created for brands out of less.
As with so much on the internet, it comes down to a judgement call. It is absurd to request permission from every single source, every single time (although there is absolutely no reason for not crediting and linking to them). But if the site is a small, independent blog like Les Rosbifs rather than one of your main competitors, it hurts nobody to use a bit of politeness.
Who knows, if they’d asked nicely, they may have even got an original piece of content from Gavin, based on the interview, which would have been a win-win situation for everybody (ok, maybe not necessarily with this particular content. But it’s an entirely plausible scenario).
One Ping to “What a steal: Les Rosbifs, Steve McClaren, Sky and the case of the lifted quotes”
15 Responses to “What a steal: Les Rosbifs, Steve McClaren, Sky and the case of the lifted quotes”
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1. M Says:
November 17th, 2011 at 12:41 amFirst, thanks for the piece, very well-written and enlightening.
Second, a link back should always be given. One excuse from TeamTalk was that their system was unable to put links in, because the articles are automatically used for mobile web (which may or not may be a plausible excuse, I don’t know). However, a website being unable to hyperlink is quite ridiculous, for whatever reason. It’s one of the most basic things a site should be able to do.
However, the ‘FAQ’ on Lesrosbifs says “Q: Can I use your data for an article/publication I am writing? A: Sure, so long as you credit me, preferably with a live link.”
That’s his owns words – he insists on being credited, and ‘prefers’ a live link. They should have done both by decent internet standards, but I think it’s tough to say they acted immorally when the site itself sees a link as an added bonus rather than mandatory, and insists only on ‘credit’ (ie a namecheck) which was given.
Not that the Sky sites would have read this! But the taking of quotes didn’t even go against the explicit code stated on the site, let alone a more vague unwritten ‘moral’ code.
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2. SurrealFootball Says:
November 17th, 2011 at 7:31 amTerrible piece. Lesrosbifs getting more attention, just what the lad wanted.
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3. Gary Says:
November 17th, 2011 at 7:57 amM, that’s a decent point, I think. Morally, it’s a grey area (and, by gosh, yes it is vague at that). You are right, they’re under no obligation to do so.
Perhaps it’s less ethically they were wrong and more they’ve gone against the spirit of the community that exists in blogging. Whatever that may be.
Still the hyperlink thing… It’s a bugbear of mine. If you can link, you should. And if you really don’t want to give them any SEO benefits, you can always do a nofollow link. That still points people to the original.
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4. Mark Chalcraft Says:
November 17th, 2011 at 8:14 amThe argument about the mobile web is nonsense. I am using a mobile device and I discovered this article through the use of…a link!
What this all demonstrates is that a proportion of media outlets have a complete lack of understanding of how the web works. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the industry is struggling.
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5. Online journalist Says:
November 17th, 2011 at 12:22 pmI have to say you’ve made some good points in the blog. It’s certainly a lot fairer than another one I read on the row recently.
Here is how I see it. Professional websites rarely, if ever, provide hyperlinks. It’s a sign of journalism today but a lot of stories on major news websites have come from another source previously.
Websites have always credited like newspapers, i.e. told ??? and the Les Rosifs interview was treated in exactly the same way. The problem is that bloggers do things differently hence there has been such an outcry at the way the LR interview was dealt with by the ‘big boys’.
Regarding the point about increased workload, bearing in mind my previous comment about most stories on websites having appeared somewhere else first, I think 10% extra workload is a reserved estimate. It would take time to trawl the internet for the original source for every story given professional sites publish 100s a day.
Furthermore, there are issues with syndicating to mobile platforms so it may involve syndicating a story without a hyperlink and then going back into it afterwards to add a link in, which I’ve already explained takes time given the amount of stories published each day. Plus it would still lead to the story appearing on the mobile platforms without a hyperlink, which may still have upset LR in this instance. So the only way not to have upset him would have been NOT lift his quotes, but surely that would have been even less beneficial to his site in the long run?
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6. Chris O Says:
November 17th, 2011 at 1:18 pmFair enough, Online journalist, but think how much more time would be spent arranging and carrying out an interview with Mr McLaren featuring original content rather than searching the web for a URL? Doesn’t really match up, does it?
@surrealfootball – I think Les Rosbifs would have been happy with the smaller amount of reflected glory he’d have gained without the help of Sky, to be honest. I doubt he’s gone power-mad with the all the attention this story created.
Well done, Gary. Great article, by the way!
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7. Gav Says:
November 17th, 2011 at 1:20 pmHomzy,
I assume that is you on the quote (5) above? You did – in no way – enhance the traffic or reputation of my site by regurgitating my interview with Steve. I mentioned on the other article you mention that I gained, possibly, about 70-odd additional visits on the basis of you and your other syndicated sites mentioning my site. When I have about 1000 visits each time I put a new article up, you will appreciate how very small fry this is.
In terms of benefit to my site, there were none. Certainly not in terms of hits. in terms of CREDIBILITY, yours were destroying my Google page rank. Others have gone on ad infinitum about the effect on a sites’ SEO when one of the big boys uses content from a blog. In next to no time, my site was at the bottom of page one; yours was at the top. And this detrimental effect would have continued on any further article I posted, whether yours were pilfering it or not.
So any argument of being beneficial to my site in the long run is wrong and crudely put. In short, you have no idea of my motivation behind running the site, so have no idea of what would be beneficial to it. Don’t even try to judge or I will be threatening more legal action your way (that’s how we play it, right?)
10% extra workload argument is a folly really. In short, the damage to the reputation of your family of sites has been done, because you exposed yourselves as being battery farms, processing stories from sources you don’t control to meet your needs.
If it takes time to trawl the internet for a source – so be it. It takes time for me to produce a brief update on a player, but it is content I have taken the time – my own, free time I hasten to add – to put together. More credit to the sites out there that do this, rather than regurgitate the content that someone else puts together.
How you may work for, what is undoubtedly one of the oldest football websites out there, is up to you. But the crass way in which you ruined my article, damaged the reputation of my website, damaged the relationship I had with Steve (as well as causing me untold difficulties in my day job as a result) and other such stresses has destroyed my enjoyment of, what was, my hobby.
Result?
Just why did you pull the articles in the end? Was it because, as one copyright lawyer has told me, I had (and still have) a strong case against you?
[EDITOR'S NOTE: After checking the email address, and conducting a few other checks, I'm more than satisfied that "online journalist" isn't Mark Holmes. While I'll give criticism where it's due, it's also not entirely fair to castigate him for the comment above, hence adding a small note on this comment to make others aware of this. Gary]
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8. Chris White Says:
November 17th, 2011 at 1:29 pmM Says:
November 17th, 2011 at 12:41 am“However, the ‘FAQ’ on Lesrosbifs says “Q: Can I use your data for an article/publication I am writing? A: Sure, so long as you credit me, preferably with a live link.”
“That’s his owns words – he insists on being credited, and ‘prefers’ a live link. They should have done both by decent internet standards, but I think it’s tough to say they acted immorally when the site itself sees a link as an added bonus rather than mandatory, and insists only on ‘credit’ (ie a namecheck) which was given.”
Quotes are manifestly not ‘data’.
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9. Chris White Says:
November 17th, 2011 at 1:42 pmOnline journalist Says:
November 17th, 2011 at 12:22 pm“Regarding the point about increased workload, bearing in mind my previous comment about most stories on websites having appeared somewhere else first, I think 10% extra workload is a reserved estimate. It would take time to trawl the internet for the original source for every story given professional sites publish 100s a day.”
Sorry, what? Having the person who’d read the original interview on Les Rosbifs in the first place actually bother to copy and past the url would add 10% to the workload?
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10. Chris 0 Says:
November 17th, 2011 at 2:04 pmI’m stunned that we live in a world where we’re even having a debate where journalists seemingly need the concept of “citing the source” explaining to them.
An internet citation is a hyperlink to the original content. It’s a maximum of four keystrokes and two mouseclicks (or can just be four mouseclicks) and is certainly less work than having to argue about it later.
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11. Simon Barnett Says:
November 17th, 2011 at 2:24 pmGreat article, Gary.
I think the point about ruining the relationship that Gav had built with Steve Mclaren is a very good one.
I’m sure that most football people would rather not be interviewed by “mainstream” journalists as they are well aware of the likelihood of their words being misconstrued (deliberately or otherwise) , leaving them reflected in a bad light.
If relationships such as this one were able to thrive and not be destroyed by the likes of Sky and Team Talk then those that are reluctant to speak their mind to the big media outlets would go to the bloggers for interviews such as the one in question here.
In turn, this would mean a better working relationship between the media and the people they write about as the large media outlets would find themselves isolated once the ‘responsible’ bloggers until they treated people like Mclaren with a little more respect.
The way things work at the moment is producing a race to the bottom where no-one wins.
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12. Mark Chalcraft Says:
November 17th, 2011 at 3:54 pmThat @homzy (blatantly him) and his cohorts are hiding behind this “standard media practise” argument shows how ignorant and arrogant they are. The internet simply doesn’t work this way, it was built upon links as a fundamental tenet of the way the whole thing works.
What gives the media the right to tear this up and declare their own rules?
Oh, and if he could also kindly explain to me, an SEO, the difference between a link on a PC and one on a mobile device, that would be great. As it stands, I’m none the wiser.
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13. Gary Says:
November 17th, 2011 at 5:48 pm@5 Online journalist
Can I pick you up on a few points here – some things I think you’ve misunderstood, others I disagree with.
Re: Professional sites rarely link out, you say. Firstly, as somebody who used to work for the BBC, we always made a point of linking out, where possible. ITV, another previous employer, are pretty decent at linking out as well, possibly because their web journalist, well, understand the web.
So if professional journalism sites rarely link out, my question is why? You can always include a nofollow link if you don’t want to pass on SEO benefits (The Guardian does this from time to time). What is the reasoning for not providing a hyperlink if you KNOW where the story comes from?
I take your point about stories rarely originating from the site that published them (and indeed made a point of mentioning this in the post). That’s fine, I accept that the industry is, sadly, geared towards this – and always has been to a point. It was the same 10 years ago, it’s moreso now.
I think you misunderstand the point about trawling the web for a link on every story. Fine, plenty of stories get passed around or come from multiple sources and it’s quite hard to pin a definitive originator. Nobody’s asking you to do this.
But where you know where the story originated from, and that one of the journalists in the organisation you work was the person who originally lifted the story, where on earth is the problem here? That won’t add 10% to your work. That’s just good practice. End of.
One other point around this – I’m assuming as this is a copy and paste job by a Sky journalist that they did a bit of fact checking, and checked the story was valid, accurate and stood up? And if they did, then surely it’s no trouble to provide a link to highlight the source?
You seem to think that hyperlinking is such a radical move for bloggers and shouldn’t be the case for mainstream media. Why is this? It’s fairly common practice across the web, both from bloggers and pretty major websites and established media companies. I’m failing to see that this is anything particularly radical or subversive. Why should Team Talk and Sky be above linking to their sources if, like Les Rosbifs, they’re pretty obvious?
As for the mobile claim, others have picked up on that, so I’ll just say – as somebody who does a LOT on smartphones every day, that’s utter and total nonsense.
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14. CoalvilleFox Says:
November 17th, 2011 at 6:56 pmI just can’t believe somebody who is paid to do a job is complaining about the length at which he is expected to reference the work of somebody who commits their time voluntarily. Your paid to do it, he’s not, so do it. If you don’t like it bother to take the time to do the interviews yourself.
Lunacy.
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15. Gary Says:
November 17th, 2011 at 11:53 pmJust a quick note (which I actually meant to put in my previous comment, but forgot), from the email and other details left, and other checks, I’m pretty satisfied that Comment 5 is not Mark Holmes. As I’ve added into a comment above, I have no problem criticising, but I also strive to be honest, transparent and fair, and it’s not fair to Mark that he gets blamed for the comment above (regardless of how close it is to his original remarks on Twitter).
November 17th, 2011 at 11:51 pm
[...] A guide to internet etiquette – when mainstream journalists lifted quotes from the aforementioned EXCLUSIVE interview with ex-England boss McClaren. [...]