AP And Other News Outlets Use Exclusive Blockbuster From Darien.Patch Without Crediting The Reporter Who Got The Scoop
From JIM CAMERON
The Courant and AP plagiarized a big story in today’s paper.
Darien independent candidate for First Selectman, Chris Noe, was found to have a police record for shooting a guy in the neck and being a peeping tom.
The two weeklies in town missed the story completely. But start-up www.darien.patch.com run by one-woman journalism-dynamo Cecelia Smith, fresh out of NYU, did the digging and made the story. She even used the Darien Times’ own archives (Police Blotter) and trekked to New London to review Stonington PD microfilms of the case… and dug up the witnesses.
She broke the story Thursday night: http://darien.patch.com/articles/noe-says-criminal-record-shouldnt-affect-race
The Darien Times rewrote her story on Saturday: http://www.acorn-online.com/joomla15/darientimes/news/local/40656-days-before-vote-darien-candidates-react-to-rivals-criminal-past.html but gave her no credit.
Stamford Advocate did the same: no attribution. And Sunday’s Courant (quoting the AP) was even more vague as to the source of the news:
http://www.courant.com/news/local/statewire/hc-ap-ct-municipalelectionnov01,0,2004534.story
This gal scored a major scoop, yet print rivals won’t give her any credit. Shame on them.
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4 Responses for “AP And Other News Outlets Use Exclusive Blockbuster From Darien.Patch Without Crediting The Reporter Who Got The Scoop”
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Yay, the Patch got a scoop. We get it already.
First off, I’d like to know if this is going to be watched by the Watchdog going forward so that when the Patch actually does rip off stories from weeklies it will be as vehemently decried as this story has been repeatedly.
Secondly, the Darien Times story is hardly a rewrite. How is it a rewrite? It is a reaction to the news and looks to be very careful to avoid any plagiarism, and in fact credits another source without naming it specifically. The Advocate and News Review, however, did rewrite the Patch story and credit no one.
In case the Watchdog hasn’t been watching, the Times has broken many, many news stories in town that many other papers including the AP have picked up without credit for the scoop. It is the nature of the business. Legitimate news organizations are more concerned with contribution than with credit. Time will build a reputation. If the Times created this much of an issue each time a scoop had been picked up, it wouldn’t have had time to break the next one.
Perhaps if the Patch and its contributors had more confidence in themselves, they wouldn’t be so defensive over what they seem to view as the sole opportunity to scoop the competition and seem to have to remind everyone using every vehicle necessary that they got a scoop that will have no affect whatsoever on the election.
[...] Connecticut Watchdog by George Gombossy and JIM [...]
What Jim Cameron DIDN’T say is that HE is a staff member of the “patch” blog, web site! And, He is a member of the darien Representative Town Meeting where Noe has been a MEMBER for several yrs…and NO, yes, NO opposition from Cameron!
Cameron is pissed because he doesn’t get better billing from the paper he attacks and the ONLY newspaper in Ct that prints his “transportation” column…even though he is a 300 pounder and seldom rides the CT trains!
He might well be (I don’t know who he is), but as I wrote earlier, the facts stand on their own, and he is right.