It seems The Washington Post and Gawker have been "having words" -- and as of today there have been around 75 media articles appear online about it. What's it all about?
PART 1. WaPo writer Ian Shapira wrote a straightforward 1,568-word profile of business coach Anne Loehr, a 'guru' who makes a living giving seminars such as, "Get Wise With Gen Ys: How to Effectively Sell to Each Generation in Today's Workplace." In these workshops Loehr explains to business people how "Gens X, Y, and Boomer" can communicate with each other in the marketplace of life. In other words, she is sort of an inter-generational sales therapist. It was a good article.
Part 2. Shapira's piece caught the eye of Gawker blogger Hamilton Nolan. He was able to see humor in between its lines, and some out and out laughs in a few quotes from Loehr and one of her clients. So, he worked up an article ridiculing Loehr's work, which included four of the funniest quotes. The quotes made up 227 words of the 437-word post called, 'Generational Consultant' Holds America's Fakest Job. It was a funny blurb.
Part 3. Shapira then wrote an article describing how his reaction to having his story "blogged" morphed from feeling flattered to feeling abused. Shapira explained:
I posted the story on my Facebook page and tweeted it on Twitter with all the appropriate symbols: "Gawker has a great posting on my #WashPost story on the #millennial guru." I hadn't had my outrage stoked by my editor yet and was still happy for the attention.
[...]
But when I told my editor, he wrote back: They stole your story. Where's your outrage, man?
Deflated ego.
After all the reporting, it took me about a day to write the 1,500-word piece. How long did it take Gawker to rewrite and republish it, cherry-pick the funniest quotes, sell ads against it and ultimately reap 9,500 (and counting) page views?
I called up Hamilton Nolan, the Gawker writer to whom I had been so grateful. "Probably took me," he said, "you know . . . a half-hour to an hour."
Envy, followed by feelings of being taken advantage of.
So, Gawker, do me a favor. At least blog this piece. I'll even write a headline for you (free of charge). How about: "Whiny WashPost Reporter Makes His Point: Respect the Genuine Article"? Oh -- one other thing. If you sell ads against your posting, can you cut The Post a check?
Part 4. The gauntlet was picked up by Gabriel Snyder, Gawker's Managing Editor. However, he decided on a different headline: The Time Gawker Put the Washington Post Out of Business.
Hamilton succinctly digested Shapira's piece and gave his post a headline...that probably resembled what Shapira wanted to write but couldn't. It's hard to imagine that in the course of working on his piece — a process that Shapira describes as two hours of sitting in on one of Loehr's courses and what must have been four truly grueling hours of transcribing the session — he didn't have a chuckle or two at lines like, "I want to touch 500,000 lives this year. I am going to touch 500,000 lives this year. I do have spreadsheets that mark how many people I am touching." He suggests as much in his Outlook piece, complaining that Hamilton got to "cherry-pick the funniest quotes." (Emphasis mine.) So why wasn't there an ounce of humor in the profile?
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So, it's unsurprising that Shapira's piece has been used by the newspaper navelgazers to kick around the idiotic notion that their work should enjoy some sort of special super-duper copyright protection. We'll leave that discussion for others, except to note that a more stringent copyright regime would probably be a bigger threat to newsgathering than that of any blog. A less cumbersome way for newspapers to head off the threat of blogs would be to beat us to the punchline.
Parts 6 & 7. Not satisfied with that spot on rant-response, the subject was touched on in two articles Gawker ran using WaPo material:
Washington Post Gives Up On 'Jokes'
In short, stop stealing our bit, Washington Post. We make the jokes around here. Or we steal them from Wonkette. Whatever.
Sally Quinn: Victim of Racial Profiling
(Confidential to WPNI: hope we don't put you out of business with all this stealing of your precious @!$%#ing article!)
Oh, my!
Part 7. The seventy-something stories mentioning this little dustup, in publications from Time Magazine to Now Toronto, and including a follow-up in WaPo, which was a transcript of an on-line chat on the subject Shapira had with readers:
New York: Hi Ian,
Is Gawker's posting of your article a win-win for you, first of all because more people read your article than would have otherwise, second of all because imitation's flattering?
Ian Shapira: Dear New York:
I can't deny it: It's boosted traffic to both the Outlook piece and the original story. And I was happy that another news organization found the generational consultant as intriguing as I did. But what does that really do for me? I don't know exactly. I am not an aspiring media critic (at least not yet -- I am 30, so I hope to be in the business for many more years to come). I tend to write stories about institutions or people that are not in the limelight that often or to the same degree as Gawker.
So, what do you make of all this? A tempest in an on-line teacup, or an early battle in a war between mainstream and alternative media? Gawker-David vs WaPo-Goliath, or Gawker-thieving-whores vs WaPo-serious-journalists? Who's wrong, who's right, and should we even care?
Also, which of the two articles did you enjoy more?