Question

Dye, instead of posting another of your overly general rants about the state of the business, why dontja:

1. Start a thread about specific problems you see and things people can do to improve the business.
2. Comment on the matter at hand in this thread
3. Just not post on it at all.

As to the original premise, that's not a good policy. As has been said, anything within the chain is fair game, but readers deserve to know if it came from elsewhere, especially if it came from out of town.

 

So what do you want them to do? You say you don't care about the byline, but then you have a problem with them running the quotes.

 

1. People don't want suggestions for improvement. They want to complain, but they don't want anyone to suggest a solution. It's an attitude that mystifies me; I have yet to figure it out and I'm not sure I want to.

2. We are commenting on the matter at hand.

3. Too late.

 

My bad, Dye. Why would I think responding to a thread on Sportsjournalists.com concerning an issue sportsjournalists deal with on a daily basis would be worthy of your time. What I should have done was told the first poster to quit wasting everybody's time and only pose deeply meaningful questions that will better society.

That said, briefs I don't think you have much of a gripe as I've rarely if ever seen much attribution to outside sources in briefs packages. An 8-inch brief, though, that's a pretty damn long brief. But my part of the discussion, as unworthy of Dye's time as it might have been, was more along the lines of how you label the bylines of other stories you use. I'm not trying to build this up as a life or death question, just a question.

 

If the newspaper is running an 8-inch brief, then it has bigger problems than obsessing about bylines.

To attempt to answer your question, I've seen a lot of "By Joe B. Blow" followed by "For The Declining Journal." I'm not sure myself why "for" is accepted, but that seems to be the practice.

 

I think they should credit my paper for gathering the information. If they aren't going to run a byline, then at least credit the source of the quotes. That is what I am saying.

 

It's a brief, and apparently one that's twice as long as it should be. They are not going to make it longer.

 

That's mean, Dye. And probably not true. If a paper took a story and cut it to eight inches, they must have liked those eight inches.

 

Since when is a brief eight inches?

 

wow - how do you guys think USA Today became the country's largest paper?

once you write that story on that company's computer while being paid by, yes, that company, guess what? that company owns that story.

and just so you're not caught off guard in the future, your editor can give your story to any damn person s/he wishes if that's the company's policy.

 

Tom beat me to it. Your newspaper is simply a business unit of the parent company. "Your" story is just as much the other paper's as it is "yours." It can do with it whatever it wants, including cut it to 8 inches and byline it according to its style.

 

I certainly don't mind my stuff getting picked up. I also don't have a problem with those three attributions (though the last does grate a bit).  The one I hate is:

By PaperDoll
SOME OTHER PAPER IN THE CHAIN

I have complained about that usage in the past.  I don't work for the paper that picked up my story and should thus be credited as part of a news service, rather than receive a staff byline. 

We are required to give their writers a news service byline. But their style is to call everyone within our regional corner of the chain the same thing.

If they want to credit me as a member of their staff, why won't they hire me?  :