radio station using your stuff without attribution

What can be done about this? I'm assuming this is an offense you just sort of have to swallow. One of the AM talk stations' "news segments" basically consists of reading the top stories in the paper, including exclusives and newsbreaks, and then closing it with "This is Joe Blow for WXXX."

 

I hope they're at least re-writing it for radio and not "ripping and reading."

Listening to copy being read straight from the paper is painful to say the least.

But at least in radio you don't have to worry about design. </zitpopper> :

 

This reminds me of an early stop in my career. I was covering preps, and the radio color guy for the local HS football team (he was also the news director at the coffee grinder station) pulled out our Friday paper in the press box and read from it on the air during his pregame show. Stats, notes, things like that. Being young and naive, I was floored by the obvious lack of contrition on his part. He said, "I just don't have the time to do all this research."

Our solution: I became a regular pregame and halftime guest on his show, he plugged our coverage and our paper (and I) got exposure. It was better than bitching and moaning about it. And the color guy and I got to be good friends, never a negative in this biz.

 

This happens a lot in our market, which is a major market. For example...
At the winter meetings, we had a scoop on our team in serious talks with an agent of a slugger. The radio station had someone at the meetings, but I had someone listen to their reports throughout that day and they didn't have it. No one did.
Lo and behold, the next morning, when our story was in the paper, the station suddenly was reporting Joe Blow was in serious talks with the Bad News Bears. I couldn't believe it.

 

I remember seeing plenty of that at my first stop, with a couple of local radio outlets and one tv station. Sometimes they had the class to give us credit. Sometimes they didn't. We actually had pretty good relations with most of those guys, so even if they didn't attribute the facts and statistics to us directly, they usually said thanks and plugged the paper at some point in the broadcasts.

 

First place I worked at was prep baseball crazy. We did a position by position preveiw for the top team with a nice graphic and stats and all that. We show up for the game and the radio guys have the page taped to the desk in fron of them. Pretty sure they gave credit.

Back home there is a radio guy who straight up rips from the local daily. You can sit there with the paper as he gives his report and flip through it with him. And, he does not give credit.

 

Sorry, folks, but this is no big deal.
Local radio and TV people have been reading stuff straight from newspapers for years. Hell, Russo and Francesa do it every day of the week on the biggest sports talk station in the country and nobody bats an eye.
We in newspapers are fanatical about attribution since the Jayson Blair mess. Radio and TV people don't care. They figure once it's in print, it's public record...end of discussion.

 

Ripping and reading is just par for the course with radio and TV, especially in smaller markets. I think it's just part of the culture. About all you can do is hope every now and then they mention the name of your rag or put you on the air.

 

I couldn't agree more. Sometimes the radio station here attributes the local paper, but once it's out, it's public. I think the only way it's a problem is if the radio or TV station claims it as their own breaking news. Otherwise, no big deal.

 

Jeez, Mike Francesa would have to get a job if he couldn't lift wholesale from print . . .

 

DING DING DING

We have a winner. No more calls please!