Anatomy Of A Trending Web Story
This is how things work. I can’t bitch about it too much. But apparently, some people want to sue others over less.
On Friday at 3:26p pst, I got an e-mail from a reader I’ve never heard from before that said only, “Possible Detroit area ruling over misleading DRIVE trailer” and had this screen cap off a TV:
I wrote the guy back immediately, seeking more info… but wouldn’t get a response until 11 hours later. By then, I’d pushed the story out into the industry bloodstream and had had it repeated without credit to me for finding it multiple times.
Of course, I didn’t “find” the story. I got a tip. And I didn’t “report” the story. Detroit’s WDIV did.. on air. But there was, when I checked, not a single reference to the story anywhere on the web, Not a mention of a suit. Not a claim of antisemitism against Drive. And not a word about it on the WDIV website.
So I called a representative of the film. She hadn’t heard anything. I forwarded on the e-mail, sans the tipster’s info.
I called the station, trying to get a hold of someone who knew about the story. After talking to 3 people, I got the reporter – though I didn’t know who the “business editor” for the station was in relation to the story – and got a voice mail around 7p on a Friday night.
I continued to wait on a sign of the story on the station’s video-heavy website and also continued to research on-line from every possible set of keywords.
I posted to Twitter at around 4:25p – “Slowly Breaking Dumb News du Jour: Some whack in Detroit’s trying to sue “Drive” 4 being anti-Semitic. Brooks wraps up Academy skinhead vote.” I still only had the screen image that was sent… not the whole story… nothing on the web.
Around 4:50p, WDIV finally posted the video of the story to their website. I tweeted a link to the video and “Here’s the nutjob suing Film District & Imagine Theaters For “Misleading” Drive Trailer” at about 4:55p.
At 5p, I posted the link to the video and a screencap of the WDIV story to my blog.
As it turns out, others were already tweeting the story and then the link to WDIV without any mention of me or MCN or Hot Blog at all.
I get a tweet from a friendly blogger from a big traffic site making sure I am ok with him using my screen cap. Sure I am. Who cares? But then, when he writes, he gives first credit on the story to some web-journalist who clearly read my tweets and ran a link to WDIV without mentioning where he unearthed it. So now credit is being handed out… but as the guy who did the leg work, I am getting second position to one of my readers.
This is how the web is shitty. There is no authority trying to keep everyone fair and generous. But we all have to deal with it. The guy who asked has surely had stories he felt some ownership of “stolen.” Probably even the guy who couldn’t be bothered to credit his source.
And ironically, the fight between The Hollywood Reporter and Nikki Finke and Sharon Waxman is about news that isn’t really news at all. It’s primarily information that is placed and one of the three of them may get a short window of exclusivity so they can say EXCLUSIVE and TOLDJA whenever they have a chance. There is occasional broken news… but in this business, it’s 2 or 3 stories a week and they are usually in the real papers (WSJ, FT, NYT) and those stories are also almost always about choosing placement.
MCN is the oldest and still, for my money, best aggregation of movie news in the world. David Hudson is brilliant, but not the same thing. Ray Pride, who is the editor of the headline section and who finds most of the content for those links, does a remarkable job. And on a daily basis, I would say we push out the work of other writers/outlets 2 or 3 times that would never be found by the blog/web mainstream without his effort. We see these obscure stories pop up all over the place, almost never credited or hat-tipped, every single day.
One idiot likes to say that I think we own the news. I do not. But every once in a while, when we find it first – at least in our circle – it can sting to see a story take off as others pretend they unearthed it. Good and aggressive aggregating is an editorial skill. Like reporting, it is not free or mindless.
It has been the the rule at MCN, from day one, to try to get as close to the original reporting as possible and to seek out the best reporting we can on any story to which we link. We don’t always go far enough to find the origins. So we can’t claim not to have credited unfairly with our links either. But we do try. We are thinking about the issue daily.
That said, WDIV did the reporting. Someone tipped me to that report. This is, basically, a nuisance story, appropriate for a Friday afternoon chuckle.
Stakes are low. I made a couple of calls. I dug out the video. No big deal. Daily work stuff.
But almost because it’s so minor – and continuing spread around the web today with links only to WDIV that would not be out there were it not for me… and may well have been found by TMZ sometime this week – it seems like a good exemplar of how quickly and without much thought or malice, individual efforts are flattened on the ever-churning web.
“This is how the web is shitty. There is no authority trying to keep everyone fair and generous. But we all have to deal with it.”
Exactly. It goes deeper than people not doping basic journalism in terms of proper crediting of stories but it’s ALL symptomatic of the fact internet movie writing is the wild west. You can make up your own standards and practices and justify misuse of content, conflicts of interest and lack of knowledge any way you want to and aside from some “grumps” out there, no one cares. No one says anything. Wheeeee!
I agree with the principle of the story… However…..
This is exactly the kind of story that serious journalists should not even report. Somebody sues a movie for a misleading trailer and it ends up on every major outlet. You are giving a voice to idiocy. You are helping it spread like a malignancy.
And by doing so, you are legitimizing it.
God bless the work youre doing to try and maintain a higher standard.
How about doing it on a story that deserves the attention.
David, I agree with the bulk of your point; this happens all the time, to all of us, and it’s frustrating. I take serious issue, however, with the notion that stories are “placed” in the trades. Absolutely some of them are, but most are not. I can only speak for Variety (which is now breaking more film news than all the others combined — and I have a year’s worth of aggregated links to prove it, but that’s a topic for another post I hope you’ll write someday) and TheWrap, my former employer. And what I can say is this: Our reporters are busting their butts to unearth these stories. They hear about deals coming together through multiple source channels, corroborate that info with others, and, whenever possible, confirm it with studios (though often we publish against their wishes). It’s an exhaustive process that requires a lot of proprietary relationships developed (and sustained) over time through lunch meetings, drinks gatherings, phone calls, emails, social media, blah blah blah blah. In short, it’s a helluva lot of work, and it irritates me to no end when people pass off what we do as “press-release journalism,” in so many words. Yes, publicists approach us with stories they want to place. Sometimes we even do it! But by and large, the reason we scream EXCLUSIVE! and TOLDJA! is because, dammit, we worked hard for that scoop; we bargained & wheedled and cajoled and, occasionally, put our reputations on the line to get it; and we’re competing against other shops who are doing the same. So maybe give us a break?
Josh… I appreciate that making the donuts is not a work-free job. I know that you and others at the trades or at Deadline and The Wrap for that matter, don’t usually just get a press release and slightly reword it and print it.
However, look at the Top Stories on Variety.com right now…
Investors boo Netflix’s fix
‘Breaking Bad’ hits ratings high
Par hires Stainton to run toon division
Iacono is an ‘Owned’ man
Fox 2000 nabs ‘Whip It’ scribe’s rom-com
Boneta set for Adam in ‘Paradise Lost’
Margate House brews up ‘Java Heat’
Gov. Brown extends film incentives
‘Pan Am’ hits turbulence
Comcast follows trail of tiers
Sony, Uni, WB set to offer films, TV for UV
Is there is single story there that required more than doing some legwork on a story that was already set up by an interested party looking for publicity?
Where I happily give more serious journalists credit is that they don’t do (as much) one-source journalism. When a one-sided piece lands from a source, the story is then worked, asking real questions about the issue in question.
But don’t forget… I was once a part of this game. And perhaps I have held onto my biases of experience for too long. I have a first-hand understanding of “a lot of proprietary relationships developed (and sustained) over time through lunch meetings, drinks gatherings, phone calls, emails, social media, blah blah blah blah.”
I respect a guy like Mike Fleming building and maintaining those relationships. However, the question is, what is the quid pro quo as those relationships get firmed up? As journalists, especially covering this business, we tend to be all to happy to get sucked into believing we have earned favor with our work or charms and not the fact that we make the people handing out scoops happy they chose us to hand them to. There are all kinds of reasons why they choose one person over another. Could be the size of the outlet. Could be the seriousness of the outlet. Could be fear of getting screamed at by a lunatic. But it’s pretty much never… really, very rarely, because we’re “good journalists.”
I respect hard work…. even in the case of Crazy Nikki and Self-Loving Sharon. TMZ is a grind too… and they are bottom-feeding scumbags. But they work hard.
I try to show respect to the work and to the people who are consistent in doing it well. I don’t pick at typos and minor errors. I don’t resent 5 press release stories to every story that got worked. If someone delivers 2 real stories a day, they have worked hard. And many are asked to do more than that these days.
I learned very early on that the trades were not interested in pushing too hard for any greater truth than the truths that the studios and agents were comfortable with. You may be pushing that now. If so, congrats. I chose not to go that way.
I can’t speak to Variety these days because Variety has isolated itself into the ether, in terms of the web. But I know that most of the screaming demands for authorship of a story are on stories that were gently placed, whether by agents or studio execs or sometimes even publicists.
Should I care more about who changed agencies last week or the latest announcement of a sequel to a Malcolm D. Lee movie? Maybe. I know that “the get” is similarly exciting whether it’s a real story or a bullshit story. A win is exciting.
But when it comes to the vanity of the trades or the major papers or now, Nikki or Sharon, it’s carcinogenic. It’s so very easy to lose perspective and for it to become about you (not YOU) as the writer.
I think Tim Gray is a good guy and has kept things above board at Variety under his watch. I know that everyone there works hard, whether I care about the output or not. And I respect that.
But a trade is a trade.
Look at the last 10 stories at Deadline…
DGA Honors Host & Presenters Unveiled
AMC’s ‘Breaking Bad’ Finale Up, FX’s ‘AHS’ On Track For Top 18-49 Spot In L+3 Ratings
Live+7 Ratings For Premiere Week: ‘Modern Family’, ‘Supernatural’ & CBS Lead Gains
Netflix Shares -4.8% Despite Cheers For Decision To Scrap Qwikster
O.D. Welch New COO At Cameron-Pace
Diego Boneta Is Adam In ‘Paradise Lost’
Has Oprah’s Star Power Dimmed? Relaunch Of OWN Will Put That To The Test
Universal Takes Vows On ‘Best Man 2’
News Corp Stung By Shareholder Advisory Services Urging Investors To Reject James Murdoch And Other Board Candidates
WME Partner Sean Perry Elected HRTS President
I know that many of those stories took time and energy to report. But is there one of them that wasn’t a product of someone releasing information with the goal of having it quoted and placed and repeated ad naseum?
As James Urbaniak would say, “Just sayin’…”
I had saw that you had taken objection to me linking to that story on my Twitter feed on Friday and, perhaps, thought, with some investigative journalism on your part, you would also realize that, beyond the video essays (i.e., opinion pieces) I do at Indiewire’s Press Play, I am not a web journalist by any stretch of the imagination (nor would I claim to be), nor have I ever reported on movie news.
Now, Scott Weinberg hat-tipped me on the story, something I didn’t ask for nor did I think I was owed this. And if he decided to remove the hat-tip, I seriously could care less. (I just happened to be the first person on his Twitter feed who linked to that story. It could have easily been someone else.) Nor do I think by linking to it on my Twitter feed that, in any way, do I own the story. It is just one of many things on the web that I link to (like articles on movies, politics, my own video essays, etc). Now, if the whole thing is about whether a link on Twitter has to always be sourced from where I found it, that seems a bit absurd, don’t you think, to hold a Twitter feed to journalistic standards?
Now, if an actual movie journalist had just taken your story without the hat-tip and posted their own article on it, I would understand this. But when I was told I was called out on your Twitter feed for linking to this story, I can only respond that I’m not in your business, nor do I plan to be in your business of reporting movie news. My posting of the link was to share something I thought was ridiculous to others on Twitter, not to steal your scoop for my own non-existent movie news site. Regardless, how I want to present my Twitter feed, as someone who doesn’t report movie news for any website and never will, is sort of my business, isn’t it?
Admittedly, I’m finding this all a little bizarre, particularly being considered a web-journalist, as if I were either trying to be you or Mr. Weinberg or anyone else on these other movie news sites. On the other hand, if you object to the content of my video essays, those are certainly fair game.
Point taken, Steven.
And kinda of my bigger point. You didn’t have to be malicious in the least for it to play out oddly. Nature of the beast now.
Since stories spread across the web instantaneously these days, I wonder how much impact being “first” really has on readership. To me it’s not about who gets the news item first, but who writes the most interesting and informative commentary about it. And the Hot Blog scores highly in that respect.
Well, being “first” should, at least in theory, mean that you get the linkbacks from everyone else’s story that’s based on yours. I think a valid credit is a “source: X via Y” where Y is wherever you first came across a story (reddit, THR, whatever) and X is the site that ostensibly broke it. In the era of RSS readers and mass aggregation of stories instantaneously, though, getting the credit for the breaker of the story seems the more important thing.
Although it’s obviously likely that the biggest/most well-known sites, should they be willing to not link back to a site like MCN, are probably going to get away with stealing credit for originating it, and thus get the linkbacks from all the other smaller sites, etc. Vicious circle, and the alternative (watermarking your images, etc.) are not so pretty either.