Gary Andrews

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).

written by Gary \\ tags: blogging and journalism, journalism ethics, Les Rosbifs, Sky, Sky Sports, Steve McClaren, Team Talk

If anonymous commenting on the internet had a users guide, then one of the more sensible pieces of advice would be “Don’t do it from your work PC.”

It’s advice a commenter on the previous post would have been good to consider. I don’t make a habit of running Whois searches on the IP address of every commenter but, given that this place doesn’t get that many trolls or sockpuppets, and given the subject matter, I was a bit curious. Turns out the IP address was from one of the (many) PR agencies who’ve pitched me this World Cup.

Fail.

My first instinct was to blog about it. Look at me! I’ve found another PR person not getting online! I can call them out and it’ll add to the legions of PR fails!

Yes, that would have been fun. But what would it really achieve, in all honesty?

I’m not in the habit of naming and shaming – it’s always struck me as a little counter productive. And, frankly, it the grand scheme of things immature PR leaves childish anonymous comment on insignificant blog isn’t really up there with war crimes.

After sleeping on it, I felt less comfortable with the idea of outing the agency. After all, one employee isn’t representative of the whole company.

The thought also occurred that if this had been a piece of journalism for publication I would have at least made an effort to get the accused’s side of the story before going anywhere near the publish button. And if, as I’ve often said, bloggers aspire to be journalists, then they should hold themselves to the standards journalists have as well. Even if journalists regularly fall short of these themselves.

So I emailed the director of the agency, who emailed back promptly, with an invitation to talk over the issues on the phone, which I did.

And I now consider the matter to be at an end, and I’m really satisfied with the response (and no, I didn’t demand any action against the perpetrator. It’s not my place to tell a company how to conduct their own HR).

Why? Because ten minutes on the phone was productive. The director came across as very switched on and took the issues seriously. I came away with a very favourable impression.

What’s more, we both agreed to keep each other’s contact details. They’d contact me if they thought it would be useful, but would also take me off the general mailing list, and I know that there’s somebody at the agency I can contact if I’m writing stories on certain topics, which I may well do in the future.

A win-win situation, really.

So, what’s the lesson (other than don’t try and post childish comments on a blog during work time).

While there’s a lot wrong with PR, there’s also a lot of good, sensible people working hard in the industry, doing their best to make connections with bloggers. And to a certain extent they have to tread on eggshells while doing this.

A wrong move with the wrong blogger, no matter how well meaning or unintentional and you can find yourself passed around Twitter, mocked by all and sundry. There’s no guarantee that if you catch the blogger on a bad day with a bad move, they won’t take umbridge and blog about it.

Not that there’s anything wrong with calling out bad practice, when appropriate.

But it did make me stop and think. How many bloggers have burned bridges or got themselves a reputation for being difficult for happily blogging PR fails.

Yet could they have improved things and actually developed a good long-term relationship with a good contact if they’d taken a step back and tried to resolve things behind the scenes first. It’s not as if anybody was going to beat them to publishing it, in a lot of cases.

One line from an old news editor of mine always sticks in my mind – “[Competitor x] may be first. But we’re always going to be right.” In other words, I’d always prefer to take a while longer to establish and verify the facts rather than rush to publish. Today was no different. I’m glad I did.

I consider today’s conversation confidential, although I think it’s worth quoting one line from my conversation. As an agency, I was told, we’re committed to treating bloggers the same as journalists.

I like that, I think it’s a good attitude. It’s something I’ve said roughly the same in the past, although you obviously have to make allowances for the different medium you’re working with.

And although bloggers are very good at calling out bad journalism, both blogs and journalists can be even quicker to call out bad PR – whether it’s justified or not – or calling out anything they consider wrong in general.

I’ve seen plenty of examples over the last couple of years where bloggers and PR have got into very public spats over something that has always struck me could have been dealt with without having to go public.

There’s a lot to be said for making an effort to build contacts and relationships rather than losing it quickly (although equally you can say that PR in general could avoid a lot of these issues if people from the industry didn’t continue to make elementary errors).

I’ve always maintained that others should be treated with the same respect you’d hope to be treated. I’d like to hope that, God forbid, should I make a similar fail one day, that the blogger has the good grace to contact me and give me a chance to talk over the issue before hitting publish.

I’d be interested in hearing your views on this one. Do you think bloggers hit publish too quickly? Should they blog first and ask questions later? Or is it only fair? What would you have done?

I don’t think there are any right answers, personally, but I’m very glad I took the time to contact them. Given the chance I’d much rather try and work on developing a relationship rather than kill it before it had the chance to succeed or fail.

written by Gary \\ tags: blogging, journalism ethics, pitching bloggers, PR

The only surprising aspect to the PCC’s announcementthat it’s looking into how newspapers get information from person profiles on Facebook was the length of time it’s taken for such an announcement.

It’s an issue that was bound to crop up sooner or later, and is also an area that has got no less grey since previous bloggings.

If it makes users of Facebook, MySpace, Bebo et al more aware of the potential consequences of putting personal information up online, then that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If you’re still happy to share that information, then fine.

However, it’s difficult to see exactly how the PCC would police this if they did write it into a code of conduct. The suggestion seems to be the levels of privacy applied to the individual profile but that would still turn the grey area and even deeper shade of grey. Exactly what point is the privacy setting considered too private for journalists?

If the information is available online, then the journalist has as much right as anybody else to access it. There’s good stories, angles, and information to be had if you’re a reporter who can master searching on social nets and sites like Technorati.

The bigger question is probably not so much accessing it but how the information’s presented. The largest problem I have with lifting information from a social net is the accuracy of it. As I’ve said before, it’s a useful tool and can give excellent background, but I’d be dubious about using it as the only source, or even the main source, for a story.

It’ll be interesting to see where things go from here. As Roy Greenslade writes:

“I can understand why the PCC is carrying out the research, but I wonder whether any editor will sign up to any restriction on his/her paper’s right to seek out information that people have themselves uploaded.”

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Facebook, journalism ethics, Press Complaints Commission, Roy Greenslade