Today, Cortyn is upset about news sites that don’t care much about providing sources. A frustrating everyday occurrence in this business.
Copying, Rewriting, Forgetting Sources
Guys, gals, grab the popcorn because Cortyn is angry again. Today, it’s not directly about games but rather about other gaming sites and news portals. As expected, this is also a fiercely contested market. It’s about clicks, advertising revenue, and all the things that are often not talked about but are necessary to keep such a site running. And increasingly, it seems to be the case that sources are not even mentioned – at least not when it would require referencing a “competitor’s site.”
No question, there are news items that read very similarly across all major sites. This is usually because there was a unified press release that people heavily relied on. Alternatively, a large English site has some exclusive news that then spreads. It is quite normal for the outcome to read similarly on all German sites.
When they don’t even change the headline…
However, I grow a third horn out of my forehead when people brazenly copy and then don’t even have the decency to name us as a source. It gets even better when they don’t even think of coming up with a new headline. Care for an example? A few days ago, I wrote the news ‘WoW: “We did not do enough with Warlords of Draenor”‘. It was based on an interview from the English site PCGamesN. I even cheated a bit because the sentence “We did not do enough with Warlords of Draenor” does not appear in that form in the interview but rather reflects the content of the complete interview.
A certain other site that I will simply call “BuffSpell.com” shortly thereafter wrote their own news titled: ‘WoW: “We did not do enough for Warlords of Draenor” – Blizzard admits’ – they didn’t even bother to disguise the copied content at all. You can look it up if it’s not obvious enough who I mean. That the news only specifically addresses the same two points that I also highlighted is almost a given.
Coincidences that don’t exist
The same thing happened with the story about the Scarlet Quartermaster. To my knowledge, no other German site had this before – because I learned about this trader in the beta and waited for the day of the Darkmoon Faire to publish it. And – oh wonder – a certain site took it up a few hours later. Of course, again without mentioning sources. Did they happen to research the same thing in the beta as I did, darn it! But quickly taking their own screenshots and slapping “Source: BuffSpell” on the image apparently suffices. I would be utterly ashamed.
I must confess that before Mein-MMO.de, I wrote little for other sites, so I don’t know if such behavior is “the norm” everywhere. Personally, it bothers me immensely. I’m quite glad to have a boss who places a lot of value on source attribution. I (and quite a few other writers on the site) believe that it’s simply good manners not only to mention the pure “information source,” which usually has an English origin, but also the one that brought attention to something. After all, without either of those, the news on our site would not exist. Perhaps it’s naive and foolish to expect such decency in our “eat or be eaten” world, but seriously: what can one lose? A little bit of ego because you link to another site? The great danger of losing one or two readers because they check that you didn’t have the news first?
I certainly don’t want to present ourselves as the great savior in the sea of news sites because we make mistakes too. But I’m quite proud that we at least don’t shy away from honest source attribution. For me, this has something to do with the last bit of honor and decency one can offer someone when they are using someone else’s work. Source attribution is something you learn in elementary school, after all. Or what do you think?
Wow… this has turned out to be a bit longer than originally planned. Perhaps you enjoy this little insight into what really drives news site authors up the wall.
