bookmark_borderAn open letter to Journalists

Dear Journalist,

I understand that at times it can be hard to find a good article, that deadlines must be met, and that you are under a lot pressure to deliver.

I also understand that the internet is chockful of content, a lot of it of good quality, and that blogs in particularly lend themselves nicely to the provision of the “human side” of the story. I understand that, really I do.

Unfortunately there seems to be a bit of an issue at the moment, with a few journalists pillaging blogs for content and the underlying view seems to be, “well, they are just blogs”. Now, I know (and I’m guilty of this in the past myself) that bloggers have always been the most forthcoming with credit when re-using your content but I think we are getting better at that and remember, just about all of us are amateurs.

That said, there really is no excuse for this sort of thing* which really doesn’t cast your profession in the best light and, even to the hobbyist blogger, spanks of shoddy work.

Like I say, I know that it’s only a few of you that are falling into this bad habit, and I guess that if you weren’t misquoting and badly researching your articles around blog stories, you’d be doing it on some other topic, but here’s the kicker.

We bloggers read each others blogs. We know them well, like old friends. We know the history, we know the personality behind the blog, so we know when all you’ve done is do a few quick searches and cobbled together a twisted view of reality.

And, really, we’d all kinda like you to stop doing that. Feel free to contact us, ask us questions, learn about who we are and why we blog, and most times we’ll be so accomodating you won’t believe it. Honest, most of us are pretty decent people just like most of you.

I hope that’s cleared things up a little,

Sincerely,

The Hobbyist Blogger

* In this case, the editor has been contacted and the article has been reported to the Press Complaints Commission. I’d encourage you all to spread the word about this, it’s not the first time and unfortunately I doubt it’ll be the last, so the more coverage this gets (hopefully) the lower the chance of it happening to you or I.