Stella Pop Content Development – Washington Post vs. Gawker – The Thriller in Plain Vanilla – Part 2

Washington Post writer Ian Shapira recently reported a feature on a business guru who consults executives on how to deal with twentysomething employees and clients. When Gawker wrote a snarky post based on (and linking to) his article, he was thrilled at first. Then, prodded by an editor, he looked more closely at the Gawker post and decided that, because it recapitulated his article so throughly, he had been “ripped off,” which he then wrote in a commentary.

A real battle of mental giants. I’m sitting on the edge of my seat. What will they write next? Here’s Gawker’s rebutal.

2. Tribal war: Tribe founder vs. the Washington Post

Aw man, some shit’s going down between blogger Mark Pincus and the Washington Post, and the Tribe.netfounder tried to turn it into a story of Old vs. New Media.

It isn’t, naturally — it’s more likely just that the paper naively picked up a revenge story from businessman Murry Gunty. See, Pincus blogged about his classmate Gunty this January, recounting some old college ethical scandal and citing Gunty as an example of an unpunished bad businessman. Gunty wasn’t happy, so he called Six Apart — the people who host Pincus’s blog — to tell Pincus to take down his article or remove Gunty’s name.

HuffiPo’s Nico Pitney was called on at an Obama presser to ask a crowdsourced question from Iranians. Dana Milbank called out Pitney in a Washington Post column for collusion with Obama’s administration. They smacked each other down on CNN today!

The Huffington Post being called on at Obama pressers has been a great source of crunchiness! To the media, of course, because the general public could honestly give a shit. When the awesomely named young’un Nico Pitney got called on by Obama at a recent press conference, he was ready with a question from Real Live Iranians that he had asked for online previous to the press conference. Dana Milbank wrote a columncalling out the dog-and-pony that was said presser as “The Obama Show.” Arianna Huffington then weighed in, saying that Milbank’s got his facts “all wrong.”

And another comment – yawn. Are we having fun yet?

4. The Washington Post versus Gawker

Shapira’s claim that Gawker did not properly attribute him are unfounded.  The Gawker post links to the original article and to Loeher’s generational cheat sheet.  Hyperlinks are the footnotes and citations of our generation (as Loeher would probably say). I’m giving my advice for free: my generation thinks that generational business coaches are B$.  We live in a cut and paste culture; computers lower the barrier to making derivative works, as the next section of this post will demonstrate.  The subject of the original article was pretty ridiculous to begin with, as if it were tailor-made for Gawker fodder.  Gawker added value to the original with its snarky commentary. (Ms. Loeher, is snark a characteristic of my generation too?)

That’s another person using the word snarky, boy if take out the word snarky you might not have anything here. Move along folks, nothing to see here!

Mommy may I have another? Yes.

Stolen or Re-contented? Stella Pop

5. Did Gawker Rip Off The Washington Post? Yep.

“The more I toggled between my editor’s e-mail and the eight-paragraph Gawker item, the angrier I got, and the more disenchanted I became with the journalism business.”

So wrote Ira Shapira in today’s Washington Post, describing his reaction to Gawker’s write-up of his recent story on a consultant who explains Millennials to Gen-Xers and Boomers.  At first he felt flattered; then, ripped off.

He’s right to feel that way. He was.

Man, this has got to be good for business. This is the last link, I have a rule, “One Page Deep.” You know what I’m talking about and if you don’t – get curious.

6. Gawker and The Washington Post: A case study in fair use

Washington Post reporter Ian Shapira wrote a whimsical profile of a dubious “business coach” who specializes in understanding Generation Y. (I think that includes me, but who knows.) Gawker, as is its wont, blogged about the piece, quoting extensively from the Post. Now, Shapira has penned a thoughtful and balanced essay on whether Gawker’s appropriation of his work should be considered copyright infringement. It’s exactly the situation at stake in recent threats by The Associated Press regarding the “protection” of their content.

Whatever your personal opinion about U.S. copyright law and how it should apply on the Internet, judges who consider the question are obliged to weigh four standards of fair use, including the extent of republication, whether the reuse is itself unique, and how it all affects the commercial market for the original content. In that spirit, here’s some data to consider from Shapira’s essay and my own research:

Words in Post article: 1,527
Words from Post article quoted in Gawker post: 226 (15%)
Original words in Gawker post: 204
Labor devoted to Post article: about 2 days
Labor devoted to Gawker post: 30-60 minutes
Cost of Post article: roughly $750
Cost of Gawker post: roughly $20
Revenue generated from Post article: unknown
Revenue generated from Gawker post: roughly $200
Blog links to Post article: 7
Blog links to Gawker post: 4
Rank of Gawker post among referrers to Post article: 2nd
Rank of Post article in Google search for profile subject: 3rd
Rank of Gawker post in Google search for profile subject: 6th

That was the last and the most interesting and at least the writer brought something more to than the table, other than a rehash of the weak body blows by each of the two feather weight non-contenders in the battle – THE THRILL in PLAIN VANILLA.”

Stella Pop – content and re-content the next “GEN” of something or other? Who Knows?

Anyone know a good Generational consultant? What the?