radio station using your stuff without attribution

I'm not bitching about it. I don't think it's too much to tack on the name of the paper, and think it's bullshit that a radio drone would read the first two grafs of the story verbatim as if he wrote it. Even if they're going to lift it, they can write their own copy -- or maybe they can't.

 

Eh, just tell the newbie to fetch you a beer already.

 

bingo! the local broadcast newsminutes or newswatches are basically the top stories from the local paper. hopefully they're slightly re-written. also, the local broadcast bureau rewrites newspaper stories throughout the day. the broadcaster is under no obligation to cite the newspaper that AP copy credits.

 

Bullshit. It IS a big deal.

I was once the SE in a town with a 6-day daily, very heavy on local coverage, and a tin-horn radio station that also liked to bang its drum about being great on local coverage. Every Tuesday and Thursday, they would cover a game live -- pregame and postgame shows, very big deal.

After they returned from the game they covered, that was it. No information on any other games until the next morning. Our paper was delivered early, about 6:45 a.m., so usually they'd open the 7 a.m. news with a big flourish: "Last night's complete high school roundup!!"

And then proceed to read our stories word for word, right down to the box score. "And Ollie Dorkus chipped in for one free throw for one point."

The radio station made a series of snarky promo ads, "Get your sports live -- don't pick it up off your doorstep the next day. Get the latest results, not yesterday's news."

We got pissed about it. Our publisher talked to their station manager, asking him to lay off the attack ads, and at least give us a name check if they were going to steal our stuff. The station manager basically told him to go piss off.

Eventually, we fixed them good. One night there was a big game between two of the top-ranked teams in the state. THEY covered some other game. We printed up a copy of our front page with everything the same -- except we reversed the final score between the two ranked teams (a huge upset, which would have completely thrown the state rankings in two classes into a frenzy.) We even reversed the box score and the quotes, so it had the wrong team winning all the way through.

We printed up a few dozen copies of this version, and told our circulation manager to make sure THAT the one that was delivered to the radio station.

They busted on the air at 7 a.m. with their big exclusive: "Huge upset in showdown of state-ranked teams!!", and continued breathlessly until 9 a.m., when their receptionist came in to answer the firestorm of calls from fans of the team which REALLY DID win the game, all shouting, "WTF are you talking about?"

The station manager called our publisher, all flamed off and threatening to sue. The publisher told him to piss off.

 

That is a great story! Your publisher is my new hero.

 

TV station in a close-by market ripped off a story of mine w/o attribution for its Web site. Told my editor about it, and she wrote the TV station a nice email with the words ''copyrighted material'' included. In five minutes, we got an apology email saying they credited the paper on the air but forgot to do it online (uh, sure).
They took it off immediately.
Now if only a certain paper in my neck of the woods could apologize...

 

Starman is right. Maybe you could dismiss this with a wink and a sigh once upon a time, but with ad dollars growing scarce, there isn't any room for freeriders. If nothing else, papers should find a radio station to partner with, license their content under profitable terms, then blitz everyone else with cease and desist letters.

 

you people are nuts. this is called reality. i realize it sucks to see your hard work broadcast without acknowledging your hard work -- it definitely happened to me when i was in the business -- but because you've reported the news, you don't hold a monopoly on it. you don't own what you reported. copyright doesn't apply to broadcast rights. anyone with a microphone and the right equipment is free to read the newspaper on the air and not give attribution.

 

Starman, that is a hell of a story. Very clever.

 

Great move. Not everything has to be a pissing contest. I was going to suggest befriending the radio guy and let him see your point of view. You one-upped me. Sometimes you really do catch more flies with honey.

 

There are certainly times when it is a problem, such as the case starman talked about. But, I think in 98 percent of the cases, it's no big deal.

 

leo1, I know you're a law student, and I'll be respecting that, but I'd like some sort of concrete evidence for why it's not bullshit. It's like Chest Rockwell said in Boogie Nights, you might own that tape, but that magic on that tape? That's fuckin' ours. They might own the news, but they don't own that. They can't read the stuff verbatim.