In our rush to get some items in the paper and get the paper to the press Thursday night, one of our editors lifted some content from bostonist.com without authorization from the folks at bostonist. We attributed it, giving the web address of the item, but we did not seek permission in advance.
Following a post about BostonNOW by Cory Doctorow on boingboing.net, Jon Petitt of bostonist noted the unauthorized lifting of content. I have e-mailed the following note to both Jon and Cory. We apologized and assured them it would not happen again.
Jon:
Let me apologize for our unauthorized lifting of copy from bostonist. I am embarrassed and chagrined. I did not authorize or clear it, nor was I even aware of it. I will certainly find out how it happened and make sure it never happens again.
That (unauthorized lifting) is definitely NOT our model. We hadn't planned on doing that and we don't plan on doing that in the future.
Our vision is based entirely on contributors coming to our site and posting, not us going out on the Internet and poaching.
Our model is to attract Boston-area bloggers to the BostonNOW.com website to become part of a community and to have the opportunity to be published in a metropolitan daily newspaper with 150,000 circulation and a readership of between 300,000 and 400,000 people. We hope people want to share their stories, ideas, arguments, photos, videos, podcasts, etc. with hundreds of thousands of other Bostonians.
We hope we can give aspiring writers, reporters, photographers, videographers, etc. the kind of exposure that can help jump-start their careers. Ultimately, we hope to develop a compensation system to reward them for their work with something beyond fame and massive exposure.
This incident will not happen again, and, at the risk of over-doing it, I apologize once more for this instance.
If you think it's appropriate, please forward my apologies to other members of the bostonist staff and management.
Sincerely,
John
John Wilpers
Editor-in-chief
365 Media USA
BostonNOW
30 Winter St.
Boston, MA 02108-4720
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6 comments:
Nice to see that you have started up. How do I sign up to contribute, and how much are you going to donate to my hospital each time you use one of my posts?
it's bostonist.com, not bostonist.net
The issue in question was the Thursday 4/19 issue of BostonNOW.
Are you kidding me? You just stole that stuff from Bostonist? I saw that sidebar and I thought you had some kind of cool arrangement to excerpt their stuff. Also, John, you are clearly clueless and brainless because you called the section "Bostonist Blogs," as if each post was a separate blog. Bostonist is a blog, or "web log," but each post on Bostonist isn't a blog by itself. Old guy MSM losers online. Doesn't work. Go back to your estate in Marshfield.
Whoops. That's not good. But it's good to see that Ron Borges is still getting work.
Paul, as we mentioned in our email exchange this morning, we'll be communicating with everyone as soon as the technology is ready to roll. Thanks for your patience!
Anonymous, I made that correction to John's post. Thanks for your eagle eye.
- Regina
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