Dear dimwit on the phone

[MightyMouse]

It's all good BillyT. I described it to the city editor as being similar to "you always cover Podunk East and never Podunk West" during school season.

But, dude, you never cover Podunk West.

They only cover Podunk West when they lose.

 

[MightyMouse]

I think I've posted about this issue in this thread before ...

We have several sister papers that are weeklies and we share content with them. No big deal, right? We've had this model in place for years.

But the publisher at my hometown paper, for one reason or another, hates me. I emailed her and some other editors in our company a link to a story I wrote about the community college in this area bringing back sports. I said they could run it, just put my name on it and it'd be all peachy keen.

Well, it wasn't. The hometown paper's publisher changed/added ONE damn thing to my story and took my name off it, passing it off as a generic company staff report. I emailed the hometown paper's publisher, asking her to put my name back on my story, but she never responded. Even stopped by the office, but she supposedly wasn't there that day, even though her vehicle was parked out front and someone I know said she had been there.

So I emailed my publisher and editor, who's on vacation. Publisher didn't do shirt, except to tell me to wait till our editor gets back from vacation.

This shirt pisses me off to no end. I get that we have an agreement, or whatever, with the smaller papers in our chain. I really do understand that. But that doesn't give them the right to take people's bylines off stories they use.

The publisher in question has done this to me in the past. She once took a preview I wrote on one of the wrestling teams in our area -- the one school they cover, FWIW -- wrote a few grafs lead-in and slapped her name at the top. I emailed her the next day and said she had plagiarized me. Her response? I didn't know that was your story. Bullshirt.

I think what pisses me off in this instance is I went to my publisher, thinking he would take care of it for me. But no.

Other than waiting for the editor to come back to work Monday, anyone got any suggestions?

Other than not sharing anymore?

I mean, you can't stop them from ripping stuff off your website, but you at least don't have to advertise to everyone when you've written something they might be interested in.

Any other advice I'd give would just be petty and juvenile.

 

[KYSportsWriter]

I wish it were that simple, MM.

But every paper in our chain has a username and password anyone can use to log in on any paper's site and pull whatever they choose.

 

[Mark2010]

Been there. It's part of the tradeoff. Of course, you have the right to do the same to one of their stories. Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

 

[KYSportsWriter]

The only time we'd ever use one of their stories is if something breaks in that county and we can't get a reporter there. We never use their sports stories.

 

[Central-KY-Kid]

Mark2010 and MightyMouse,

Except the small "award-winning" weekly always keep our photogs' credit on cutlines.

Photogs: Name/Podunk Press
Writers: No name/Smalltown Newpaper Chain Service

However, they tend to leave our boss's name (S.E.) on many of his stories (although our paper's name is still taken off).

The sad thing is we, as a paper, have a rule that if we take a photo or story from a sister paper, we leave the byline (writer or photog's name and name of paper). We never use the "Smalltown Newpaper Chain Service."

 

[KYSportsWriter]

Things have gotten so bad at that paper, they combined two different softball recaps from the postseason and just put CKKid's name on it.

 

[sgreenwell]

That whole situation sounds messy and uncomfortable. I could understand if they were using AP reports, but if I'm reading this correctly, you're talking about another (smaller) newspaper in your chain, right? Also, you have publishers for all of these little publications...? At least in my area, typically there's just one publisher for the chain, with other titles (city editor, town editor, etc.) for the management at each paper. (I'm guessing it's more of a naming thing than anything else, like maybe Small Weekly sold out to the bigger chain years ago, and as part of the deal the publisher is still called that.)

 

[young-gun11]

I use our daily's stuff sometimes when they have a story that's worth putting in our paper. Or when they rip my story idea because I asked some jackrabbit to do something for me and he takes the daily's photog with him!

When I run a story from any of our daily's, though, it is one they've buried (like the story idea they stole) and I run the byline as follows:

Name
The BigTown Daily

 

[KYSportsWriter]

sgreenwell, yes it's one of the smaller papers in our chain.

And yes, most of the smaller papers have publishers as well. The lady in question loves to be publisher, editor and lead writer as every edition is splattered with stories written by her. I can't count how many times I've picked up that paper and every story was written by her.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Look, parent of a high school football player, here's the deal. It's great that your high school, located 35 minutes outside of town, won a 7-on-7 tournament four hours across the state over the weekend. But we don't cover 7-on-7 tournaments because it's nothing but a glorified practice for the games in the fall. The only reason they have these tournaments are A) to make the organizer some money and B) to give a carrot for the high school coach to dangle in front of these kids involved in the "voluntary" workouts.

 

[KYSportsWriter]

Ah. The joys of 7-on-7 football.