[shib71]

Nice overview of the most recent focus for collective navel gazing.

I suspect the only way for 'reporters' to prevent second-hand reporting is to write articles that have a high signal-to-noise ratio. Articles that can't be reduced further without losing most of the value.

[wvenable]

From the article:

Look at Shapira’s article, says Snyder. It’s missing 'anything resembling a point of view.' And that’s exactly what Nolan’s Gawker post provided.

A lot of blogs that are second-hand reporting, what they usually add id their own opinion on the topic. They were interested (or disgusted) enough when reading the article to add their 2 cents to the topic. Sometimes that opinion is just as interesting (or more) as the original article.

[jballanc]

Indeed, and this seems to be one of the main motivations behind the notion of fair use. Is it such a stretch to go from discussing a piece around the water cooler, to e-mailing the link to some friends and associates, to posting opinion and criticism in a more permanent form on a blog? It seems to me that this sort of "reprocessing" of a story has been going on for ages, but that sometime in the late 70s to mid 80s society grew faster than individuals ability to communicate with their peers. It is only now that we are catching up. So why are newspapers so taken aback that we are discussing the stories they write?

In other words, I would highly doubt that what Gawker did does anything materially to diminish the value or profitability of the original reporting. Rather, it seems that news papers are failing not because of re-publication and fair use, but because they had tied themselves to an economic model (advertising) which they, ultimately, did not fully control.

[greyman]

>> So why are newspapers so taken aback that we are discussing the stories they write?

I think because sites like Gawker use the newspaper work for their own profit.

I think the following analogy could be used: Let's imagine that as a professional photographer, you shooted a photo gallery, spending quite a lot of time and money while working on it, and then you published it on your website with ads to attract readers or potential buyer. And then, I as a blogger will take several of your best photos, publish it on my blog with a few lines on comments and a link back to your website. Since I will repeat this with other photographers as well, my blog will be quite attractive so I will earn money with ads, and since my costs are minimal, I will survive a lot easier than you. This seems to happen with the newspaper in this era, with the only exception that republishing photos would be stealing and considered illegal, while republishing words is just "quoting".