So a friend points me to a great down-time website, Deadspin.com, which has the following article:
Jake Plummer, High School Coach
It's a story about how former NFL quarterback (and Capital High alum) Jake Plummer will be working as an assistant football coach at Sandpoint High School in the panhandle this fall.
Then I got to thinking... "y'know, I think I've seen that somewhere before."
That's when I realized, oh yeah. I saw it here. On IdahoSports.com. Two days ago. Desk Jock Paul broke the story just before 9 AM on Wednesday morning.
Paul's "break" led to this, a brief mention on KBCI-TV in Boise Wednesday night where sports anchor Troy Oppie credited IdahoSports with breaking the story.
But Deadspin didn't credit IdahoSports.com or KBCI with their information. They credited the Idaho Statesman, which happened to include the story in their sports section on Thursday which, obviously, is the first edition after IdahoSports.com and KBCI ran the story. I don't think it takes a Ph.D to connect the dots on how the Statesman originally came upon the information.
Nowhere in the Statesman copy does the paper credit either IdahoSports (the originator) or KBCI (the first "mainstream" media source to pick the story up).
Now... this is where we get into a bit of a journalistic gray area.
Clearly, the Statesman found out about the story from either IdahoSports.com or KBCI (which, by extension, would also be from IdahoSports.com since that's where KBCI got it). Using that information as a guide, the Statesman obtained its own independent confirmation and published the story, passing it off as its own.
Which, technically, it was. So no attribution would be needed.
But-- ethically-- aren't we splitting hairs a bit here? The Statesman wouldn't even have had any information to independently confirm if it wasn't for IdahoSports.com/KBCI-TV.
To be fair, this isn't a new conundrum in Idaho. Television stations in the Boise area have been taking Idaho Statesman stories and re-wording them into their own "original" content for years. You can check for yourself in Lewiston, Pocatello, and Twin Falls as well... just read the paper in the morning and then watch the news that night. Odds are high that there will be some stories that sound a little familiar to you. There have even been instances of television stations putting Associated Press stories on their websites and pronouncing them, "First on (insert TV station website here)." Problem is, those stories are usually produced by one of Idaho's newspapers.
I guess the short way to say what I just rambled about is, "TV stations have done it to the papers for years around here." To that end, I can certainly understand why newspapers would occaisionally feel like turnabout is fair play.
In the end, it's about ego and perception. I get that. All the outlets want everyone else to think they're the best place to go for information.
My mom used to tell me something when I was a kid that I think is pretty apt here: "if people spent nearly as much time doing it right as they did looking for shortcuts around doing it right, this world would be a much happier place."
I'm not suggesting that every story should be attributed because, ultimately, every media outlet is getting their information from somewhere. Can't have the newspaper or nightly news turn into one giant attribution-fest.
But hey, is it really that hard to give credit where credit is due from time to time?
Maybe if you do, you'll find others willing to do it for you.