I’m glad Louis Gray called out Mashable

by Mathew on January 20, 2008 · Comments

I’m a big fan of the Mashable blog by Pete Cashmore. They cover technology and the Web like no other blog, and they have some great writers — like Adam Ostrow, Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins, Kristen Nicole and others — but something has always kind of bothered me about the site, and I’m glad that Louis Gray finally wrote about it: Mashable often isn’t that great at giving credit to the blogs and writers who found an item first.

In his post, Louis is quite rightly upset about a couple of scoops he got, involving the site Readburner and another similar site called Shared Reader. In the first case, Mashable wrote about the site and gave him no credit whatsoever — not even a link. In the second case, Louis says that Mashable wrote an item and put a small “via” link at the bottom, something they often do. While this is a link, Louis is right that it’s not very prominent and is easily missed. But at least it’s a link.

The other example he uses is pretty outrageous, however: Louis says a quote he got from Robert Scoble was lifted from his post and used in a Mashable post without any link or attribution whatsoever. I think everyone would agree that taking quotes is pretty offside. Pete has responded in the comments to Louis’s post, and says he is reviewing the site’s linking policies, but he doesn’t say anything about the quote (although the post has been updated with attribution).

Attribution is something that has been — and is still — a long-running debate in traditional media as well. Television stations “rip and read” newspaper stories, but newspapers themselves routinely take articles from wire services like Reuters or Associated Press and use virtually the entire thing, but put their own writer’s byline on it. Sometimes they put a small “with files from” at the end of the story.

The fact that you can link on the Internet is one of the most powerful forces there is. A link from Mashable can help people find new blogs such as Louis’s, and they shouldn’t be stingy with their attribution — and they definitely shouldn’t be lifting quotes holus-bolus. I hope Pete and his team can set a good example for others.

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  • And if he wouldn't have called them out, readers like myself who don't investigate such things and just give Mashable all the credit would've never known. How rude of them!
  • exactly.
  • Mathew, in fairness, Mashable did give credit for the ReadBurner story, and the screenshot they gave had my name mentioned about 4 times. It was the best handled of the three specific articles. (Just thought I'd clarify that)
  • Thanks, Louis. I still think they need to shape up a little, and I'm glad
    you called them on it.
  • Television stations “rip and read” newspaper stories, but newspapers themselves routinely take articles from wire services like Reuters or Associated Press and use virtually the entire thing, but put their own writer’s byline on it. Sometimes they put a small “with files from” at the end of the story.


    ... or, mainstream journalists might even be ripping them right out of bloggers posts ... as was I wrote about recently over here: <shameless plug> http://www.deepjiveinterests.com/2008/01/19/are... </shameless plug> with respect to a study done on US journalists recently.

    I think, in general, this is a great conversation to have -- a who's watching the watcher's kind of vibe -- and attribution is one of those bloggable topics that really never gets old (mostly because issues around it keep on happening)

    Cheers
    t @ d ji
  • That's true, Tony -- that was a good post of yours too.
  • they shouldn’t be stingy with their attribution

    No they should not, but monetization is trumping journalism all over the place and I think the blog community should think about this a lot more than we do.

    I don't know about Mashable's practices, but often it is marginally paid and marginally talented writers who feed the big blogs that originally had really thoughtful voices.

    Also, natural linking has effectively become a "web currency" and many "A list" sites are very reluctant to link to sites outside of their frames of reference - I believe they see it as too big of a favor where even 5 years back it would have been done without a second thought.

    I see this as a growing problem with many large, heavily monetized tech blogs. They are (slowly) trading profit concerns for journalism and web concerns. An inevitable thing, but a bad one.
  • I agree, Joe -- which is why I think it's good that Louis spoke out about
    it.
  • Hey Mathew,

    Yeah, I was speaking about this same issue with some peeps at the Crunchies (including the Techcrunch guys). The editors and I had already mailed back and forth on Friday night regarding how to include more visible attribution in the editorial guidelines, so those changes were already underway.

    Basic issue is this: as team grows (4 to 5 core editors, more than a dozen writers and other staff), you need more and more written rules to cover the stuff that seems obvious to an individual blogger. See my comments on Louis' post for some other points from me.

    I gotta go out for the day, but I'll mail you my cell number should you wish to chat.

    --Pete
  • Thanks, Pete. I read your comments at Louis's blog, and I'm glad to see
    that you guys want to get on the right side of this thing. I appreciate
    that it gets hard when you get bigger, and some things that may be
    understood when it's just you and a couple of other bloggers can get lost
    between the cracks. But I do think it's an important issue, and I'm glad
    you're addressing it.
  • Pete,

    With all due respect, proper attribution should be something embraced by blogs written by a single person and multi-headed entities such as Mashable, GigaOm and TechCrunch.

    As blogs become increasingly seen as news sources, they will face more scrutiny and, as a well, will likely have to embrace journalistic "standards".

    Mark
  • Making attribution more visible sounds like a pretty simple task to me. Your writers should be able to figure out how to wrap a link around some decent keywords without too much in the way of "guidlines" I would think. Good judgment and a community focus should be core attributes of a good blogger, not rules that need to be enforced.
  • You're right, Rod -- linking to somewhere in the body of a blog post doesn't
    seem all that difficult.
  • Wanting attribution for your work...attribution for you work,,,that rings a bell. In fact, if I remember correctly, that wasn't something that bothered you overmuch at the time.
  • Shelley, I said at the time that I thought giving Lane Hartwell credit for
    her photo in that Richter Scales video would have been nice -- I just said
    it wasn't legally required, which I still believe it wasn't.

    In any case, that was about a photo appearing as part of a larger work for
    less than a second, which is something completely different. This is about
    taking credit for an entire post. If Richter Scales had tried to take
    credit for Lane's photo, then you would be on the right track. As it is, it
    seems like you're just being difficult.
  • You're right, the only reason I'm commenting here is because I'm being difficult.
  • Well, I'm sure you don't feel that you're being difficult, but I don't think
    there's much comparison between Lane and Mashable lifting a quote or not
    giving another blog credit when they run something that's virtually
    identical to what another blogger posted -- that would be like posting a
    photo from Lane and pretending it was yours, which is clearly wrong.
  • Richard
    Matthew,
    What is your paper's policy on sources? I think some of the confusion stems over what should be cited. If you were the editor of your paper, what would be your rule?
  • Our policy is if you use a substantial amount from a wire story then you
    give them credit at the end. If you take a quote then you should say "told
    Reuters" or "told Associated Press."

    But in a story in a newspaper you can't link to a primary source -- on a
    blog you can, and should.
  • Harold
    Personally, I stopped reading Mashable about 6 months ago. They cover everything, from the most interesting to the least interesting stories, and the writers generally aren't knowledgeable enough to actually add anything to the story. At least 1/2 of the stories are just rewritten press releases.
  • Stan_Schroeder
    Hey, Mathew. Although I wasn't called as one of the great writers at Mash (j/k, nhf), and although I'm late to the game, cause I've been ill, I'd like to shortly comment.

    It is, in my opinion, unfair to call out Mashable for not linking/not attributing the stories to the source. Mashable always links. There are dozens of sites out there, big sites, that don't link (like Ars Technica) and sites that are basically linkblogs, with most of their material being taken off other blogs with a short comment (Lifehacker). The fact that someone in some text (and Mashable produces dozens of pieces daily) didn't attribute a quote (although he did link) doesn't prove much else except the fact that Mashable is a blog. Yup, that's it: it's no NYT (yet (: ), and people writing there are bloggers, and that's why there are no strict rules about things like that.

    Personally, I am a professional journalist and I do not consider myself a blogger. I write for several publications in several languages, and if someone finds such an unattributed quote in my text (anywhere), it's an error on my part. But calling out Mashable for being some sort of evil blog that doesn't link or attribute stories is not fair, because, as I've said, Mashable takes great care to link to the source.
  • Sorry, Stan -- I should definitely have included you in that list of
    writers. I think you do great stuff for Mashable. And don't get me wrong,
    I think Mashable has lots of great material -- and I know that everyone
    makes mistakes. I'm not trying to beat up on you guys. I just thought
    Louis's post was a good opportunity to get some discussion going about some
    of these issues.

    For example, should a small "via" link at the bottom be enough when the
    content of the post is fundamentally the same as the original post? I don't
    know. Should linking once to the originating blog be enough credit for
    using a quote or some other chunk of information, or should there be more
    obvious credit? I don't know. I think a lot of this still has to be
    determined -- and it's only through talking and debating it that we're going
    to arrive at the answer.
  • Stan_Schroeder
    Well, it's hard to say, but the line should be drawn at linking and not linking. Personally, I like to link in text, but the via link was starting to emerge as a standard; I honestly thought that for some reason people may like it better. Of course, everyone would prefer a big fat bold link at the beginning of the text, but you can't always do that. I think I link fairly (I was not the author of any of those three article Louis mentioned), but some people may have too high expectations when it comes to crediting their work. BTW, I once reacted when my entire story was practically stolen on a high profile site, without any credit, and you know what I got out of it? A nice little via link at the end of the article.
  • I think part of the problem is that the "via" link is sometimes good enough
    and sometimes not. What I think really irritates some people is when the
    entire post is basically a reworded version of someone else's post, and the
    the little "via" link is the only recognition that it came from somewhere
    else. If there's more added to the post, then it doesn't seem so bad.
  • Or how about those one line lead ins to nothing more than a quote fom the linked site and then as the bottom all you get is either the Via or even worse IMO the simple [Link]

    Boing Boing is notroious for that
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