Journalistic Superiority at Work
[Could one of only two remaining daily British broadsheet newspapers be so desperate as to steal blog content?] — UPDATE: Melissa explains here. While yesterday I couldn't imagine a plausible explanation, this sounds like it could be true.
Context & Ripple Effects
This post drops into an argument already running through the tech-blog world: who owns published words online. Micro Persuasion flagged blog content theft back in December 2005, and Jason Calacanis had called out Creative-Weblogging as 'a bunch of thieves' weeks before that — so by August 2006 the accusation of mainstream outlets lifting blog material was a familiar charge, not a novel one.
What makes this instance sharper is the target: Copyblogger alleges one of only two remaining daily British broadsheets took blog content without permission, and points to an explanation from Melissa that he initially couldn't credit but now says sounds like it could be true. The claim remains unconfirmed, and no outlet pickup or public discussion followed on the day — the story lived entirely inside the blogosphere's own grievance loop.
First-order effects
- The unnamed broadsheet faces a public attribution challenge from a blogger with a readership of its own — the same exposure Calacanis inflicted on Creative-Weblogging in November 2005.
Second-order effects
- Other bloggers gain a fresh template for policing reuse: document the lift, demand explanation, then publish the exchange — turning individual grievances into reputational pressure on traditional outlets.
Third-order effects
- If uncredited borrowing keeps surfacing on both sides — Forbes' shallow journalism called out in October 2005, AdAge arguing in January 2006 that a blogger is just a writer with a cooler name — the real fight is over whether provenance and attribution become the dividing line between 'press' and 'blog', or dissolve entirely.
The trend: The 2005–2006 run of content-theft disputes marks the moment blogs stopped being free raw material for legacy publishers and started enforcing attribution as a condition of legitimacy.