The San Antonio Express-News’ sports editor says he’s had it with KSAT’s sports guys. The newspaper’s website broke news that Spurs coach P.J. Carlesimo had landed the head coach job at the Seattle Sonics, and editor Douglas Pils said KSAT ripped it off and ran it on the air without any attribution. “The Associated Press gave us credit. Heck, even ESPN.com, the self-proclaimed worldwide leader in what we do, gave us credit. But not KSAT,” Pils writes. “The Carlesimo ‘exclusive’ is just the latest in a long list of stories that KSAT’s sports guys have stolen from the Express-News. They dance around the ethical issues surrounding this practice by using terms like ‘KSAT 12 has learned’ and ‘KSAT 12 has confirmed.’” He’s just getting warmed up. “(KSAT’s) Larry, Greggy and Davey have set a whole new standard for laziness, thievery and ineptness. And until the three stooges at KSAT man up and admit they are incapable of doing their own reporting, we’ll recognize them as journalism miscreants, a species that some day, hopefully, will become extinct.”
Ouch. I imagine these types of clashes will only intensify as the distinction between newspapers and TV stations continues to blur. We’re now fighting on the same medium — the internet — and story poaching is becoming much more of an issue. For example, if a TV station pulls a story from the local paper, rewrites it, attributes it, and posts the story online without any reporting, then in essense the TV station has stolen the story and is competing for the same page views. Attribution doesn’t matter — page views and ad impressions matter. This happens very frequently (although somewhat unintentionally) with morning newscasts. Reporters tear something out of the paper, shoot a little video, rewrite it and put it on the air with attribution. Then a web producer writes a text version of it and posts it on the TV station’s site — basically the same thing that was in the newspaper but an abbreviated version. It also happens through the Associated Press when it moves a story from the newspaper and TV sites post it online (or vice versa). All in all, these are simmering issues that will likely turn into all-out brawls in the near future.
