The J junkie

Thanks to Poynter, I found out about Jody Rosen’s discovery that her article (and many others’) had been grossly plagiarized by a Texas alt weekly. Articles under the Mark Williams byline in the Montgomery County Bulletin turned out to be mere collages of several other articles (not his work) in other publications. Rosen’s expose is quite edifying.

But there’s more revelation at the bottom of Rosen’s column (also pointed out by Poynter and Jeff Jarvis):

But perhaps the Bulletin is merely on-trend—or even ahead of its time. The Drudge Report, the Huffington Post, and Real Clear Politics have made names and money by sifting through RSS feeds; Tina Brown and Barry Diller are preparing the launch of their own news aggregator. Mike Ladyman and company may simply be bringing guerilla-style 21^st-century content aggregation to 20^th-century print media: publishing the Napster of newspapers.

Wow. Frankly, as a blogger I’m offended that the editorial work of linking and aggregating (and, by the way, sending traffic your way Jody) is compared to the gross practice of slapping one’s name on somebody else’s work and passing it as one’s own. Ouch. I expected this from The Associated Press, not from Slate.

That’s just one paragraph too many (that’s already angered at least one blogger) in an otherwise edifying exposé, which I will link to (er, plagiarize) here again. Just ‘coz.

You all know the BBC is currently my favorite thing in media. I love the innovative approach they take (case in point: myCBBC, a social network for kids, and Big Cats Live, a live multimedia project involving webcams in a Kenyan national park), while still remaining outstanding at traditional media. Bonus points for their stunning documentaries.

This time, BBC Sports has teamed up with Gorillaz—the not-really-a-band band headed by a guy from Blur and an animator— to create a title sequence and original score to the station’s Olympics coverage. It’s innovative, it’s beautiful, and it’s witty. It even makes me want to watch the Olympics. I will leave it to your interpretation to decide who the monsters are.

See it here. (I’m cursing the Guardian for not making their —rare— videos embeddable.)

I’m going to pick on the New York Times again. I just read an article on the impact of Karadzic’s arrest on the credibility of war crime tribunals. Interesting stuff. I did, however, find an error in the story. Nothing too dramatic really: it says the International Crimininal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was created in 1983: in fact, it was in 1993. That’s not my problem; typos happen, and it doesn’t take away from the understanding of the story.

My problem is, there’s not one way on the page to notify the paper of the error. No comment option (seriously?), no way to email the writer or editor, not even an apparent link to a contact page. (My bad, it’s in 6-point font at the bottom if you scroll down all the way.) I don’t wanna write a gotcha comment; I just want to let a colleague know about something I noticed, so his error doesn’t stay up there for someone meaner to notice. That’s what you do; otherwise, it’s like letting someone walk around all day with a piece of lettuce between their teeth. You just don’t do that. So instead of sending a simple note to the reporter, I must resort to a blog post and hope it will register on their radar. (This shall be tagged appropriately.)

In addition to losing the precious insight of feedbacks, not making reader comments easy doesn’t make a paper look good. The Times doesn’t need another reason for someone to call them arrogant or disconnected.

I got an e-mail yesterday that both flattered and irritated me, and I’m still on the fence about it. Schmap.com, a site/software of interactive city maps for tourists, contacted me about using a photo of Montreal’s Bon Secours market, which I took this spring and posted on Flickr. One of the features on their map is user-contributed photos of landmarks. Of course, there’s no financial retribution but “many photographers are pleased to submit their photos, as Schmap Guides give their work recognition and wide exposure,” they say. Reminds me of all those unpaid internship offers where they told you working in their newsroom was a privilege and a “great learning experience.”

As the daughter of a freelance writer, I early on understood that content is worth money and businesses who ask writers and photographers to work for free are hogs. Every time you give up content, you bring down the rates for thousands of freelancers whose livelihood depends on people understanding there’s a monetary value attached to writing and photography. Pick one cause you believe in, my mom once told me, and write for them for free; the rest of them can open their wallets or ask someone else. Then I started writing myself, and I got it even more. But I also jumped on the citizen-journalism bandwagon, which is pretty much the same thing. In fact, it’s the one thing that’s always bothered me about it: we’re asking people to give up material that, especially in breaking news situations, could be worth thousands to them, exploiting the fact that they may not be familiar with media and rights.

But what’s the difference between Schmap’s query and my putting the photo on Flickr, geotagged for everyone to see when they look up Montreal? Maybe it’s that I’m getting a service in exchange from Flickr: they host my photos. I could, I guess, get a service from Schmap if I was visiting any of the cities they cover. Maybe, I’d feel more comfortable if Schmap was an open-source, non-profit, good-doing kind of an enterprise, but it sounds too commercial for me to willingly get robbed of my picture. I have till Sunday to give an answer. What do you think?

In the meantime, my vacation snapshot — which frankly isn’t worth a blog post — will get “wide exposure” right here.

A Cambodian journalist and his son were killed over the weekend in Phnom Penh. Out of professional reserve, I don’t typically write about things my newspaper is covering. But I write about this because a/ I usually write about slain journalists, b/ I am a journalist in Cambodia so I’m obviously concerned, and c/ this one seems to have gone largely unnoticed outside of Cambodia.

Khim Sambor (also spelled Khim Sam Bo) and his son, Khat Sarinpheata, 21, were killed Friday evening in a drive-by shooting in downtown Phnom Penh. They were on their motorbike, and two men on another motorbike fired 5 shots at them, according to reporting by colleagues at the Daily. Khim Sambor died at the scene; and his son later at the hospital.

The investigation has not yet determined whether the murders were linked to Khim Sambor’s journalistic activities. It could have been a mere coincidence; shootings happen in Phnom Penh, increasingly these days. But the victims were not robbed or involved in a fender-bender (yes, those have prompted several shootings lately). The family said they did not know of any personal disputes that could have prompted the killings.

Khim Sambor was a journalist for the newspaper Moneaksekar Khmer, affiliated with the Sam Rainsy Party, the main opposition party here. (The press is highly politicized here, and most newspapers are linked to one party or another.) Khim Sambor had written articles about corruption in the government, and his newspaper has been in disputes with the ruling party. Most recently, Dam Sith, the editor of Moneaksekar and an SRP candidate in the July 27 general election, was charged with defamation and disinformation for printing comments by Sam Rainsy himself linking a government minister to the Khmer Rouge. Dam Sith was put in pretrial detention for a week. The charges have since been dropped.

Local and international NGOs and the opposition have linked the murders to the election season and Khim Sambor’s activism. The government has, too, condemned the murders, as well as foreign governments, and the US Embassy has offered the help of the FBI for the investigation. Elections are in two weeks; the campaign has been a bit tense, though not to the extent of past political turmoil in Cambodia. There have been a couple of killings and other non-lethal attacks of people both from the ruling party and the opposition, as well as threats; no murder has yet directly been linked to the victims’ political activities.

Being a journalist in Cambodia can be tough and frustrating (where isn’t journalism tough and frustrating?), but it’s typically not dangerous — certainly not fatal. This is a worrisome development. So please keep Khim Sambor in mind.

For months, China has asked that the Olympics not be “politicized,” which means the country’s leaders alternatively implored and intimated the media, activists and foreign leaders not to focus on China’s many woes, but to just enjoy the competition instead.

Yet, China isn’t just focusing on the sports: China is putting itself on display. After centuries of poverty, after the economic failure of the Great Leap Forward and the PR failure of Tienanmen, after the country had to sacrifice everything about communism except the repression to the altar of development, China wants to show that its 1.3 billion people are a force to be reckoned with. The world must count with China. China is new. China is shiny. Like a bright red, lead-painted toy train.

That’s fair. Hosting the Olympics has always been an opportunity for cities and countries to modernize themselves and build grand PR operations. But it’s also always been a focal point for dissent and political action, good and bad. The Nazis used the 1936 games in Berlin for their propaganda. Two athletes performed the Black Power salute in 1968 in Mexico City. In 1972, terrorists of the Black September organization killed 11 Israeli athletes. A bomb was planted at the Atlanta games in 1996. The repression of the Hungarian uprising, racial segregation in South Africa, Rhodesia and New Zealand, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the disputed status of Taiwan and Cold War tensions, all led to either boycotts by or bans of national delegations. As recently as 2004, an Iranian judoka refused to compete against an Israeli athlete. Only a city as insipid as Albertville could organize politics-free Olympics. (I can say that because I’m French.) China applied to host the 2008 Olympics fully aware of this history. They were warned.

[Catching China at its own game, the Save Darfur organization sent out a news release pointing out the several occasions when China used the Olympic stage to air its grievances against Taiwan and the USSR.]

Besides, Chinese leaders themselves, in a clear case of “do what I say, not what I do,” have used the Olympics for political statements. Most famously, in June, when the Olympic torch made a stop on its round-the-world relay in Lhasa, Tibet (a political provocation already), Zhang Qingli, Communist Party secretary in Tibet, declared: “Tibet’s sky will never change and the red flag with five stars will forever flutter high above it…. We will certainly be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama.”

Another dispute involves Taiwan and the name under which the breakaway state will be called at the opening ceremony. China, Taiwan claims, is attempting to use a name Taipei does not recognize, which etymologically implies that Taiwan belongs to the mainland. In short, China started it.

Meanwhile, China’s only defense is not that the stories about pollution, corruption and repression aren’t true. They’re just saying they don’t want them. Ladies and gentlemen of the press, please only write the nice stuff. I don’t know one writer who would agree to that.

(This post was first published on Escape Indifference, where I just started writing.)

You guys are bugging me so much for photos, I took a couple (literally a couple) on my way to work the other day, and I won’t wait for more before posting. It’s not much, but I caught this guy practicing the national pastime of napping during the hottest hours of the day, and I thought he was funny. (He collects recyclables for a living, and that’s his work cart he’s in.) So here’s a bone for you. More this weekend.

Photographer friends, do me a favor. Which of the two framings above works best? I know it’s not grand art, but I’m unsure without an editor.

Columbia Missourian editor Tom Warhover, my former boss, is asking readers what they think of a possible business partnership with the Columbia Daily Tribune, the paper across town. I am putting my thoughts down, but taking the liberty of overstepping Tom’s mandate. If we’re going to rethink the Missourian, we gotta rethink the whole journalism school. Bear with me; these thoughts have been forming for three years. Journalism junkies and concerned citizens, please read. Others, move on or put up with a 1200-word essay. (more…)