In 2005, the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester, Massachusetts fired Ken Powers for plagiarism, when the newspaper had determined he had taken portions of a Sports Illustrated piece on the New England Patriots and claimed it to be his own. At the time, Powers was very indignant over the firing telling WBZ-TV (which was re-reported by USAToday), “I am disappointed that a 20-year spotless record doesn’t mean anything, the termination is a terrible injustice to me.” In 2003, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist from the New York Times, Rick Bragg resigned from the paper after it had been determined he had been using the work of an unpaid intern and using it as his own. Bragg didn’t seem to feel too guilty about it saying that everyone at the Times did it and it was a common practice for reporters to rely on interns, stringers and researchers in their reports. Even the New York Times admitted those personnel seldom got the credit they deserved in their contributions and after other ugly incidents then began sort of a re-education in journalistic ethics.
I am not condoning anything the aforementioned Mr. Powers or Mr. Bragg have done, but journalism is certainly in the midst of some dramatic changes as electronic media dominates the scene. However the separation between journalist and blogger is a very fine line. The only differences I can really distinguish between what quantifies someone as a journalist and a blogger is money (i.e. they are paid employees whereas there are very few paid bloggers and they are heavily supported by promotion and advertisers) and the other major difference is their access to teams, players and coaches and other league officials. Yet before I begin let me give a you a tiny bit of personal history first. Before I started this blog I was like a lot of fans who frequented hockey-focused message boards like Wild.com, Fanhome, Hockey’s Future and Metroboards. While on Metroboards I was approached to be a writer for Most Valuable Network. I had never thought about blogging and little did I know the path it would lead me towards. Most Valuable Network eventually led me to Bloguin and over 9 years later I’m still here. Woopty doo right?
I’m still just a blogger. And between the journalist crowd and the blogging crowd there seems to be some tension. I am sure to the journalists out there, bloggers probably come off as annoying. We probably come off as combative and argumentative and some of them pepper journalists with questions the way they do players, coaches or general managers, and whether they wish to admit or not, we’re competition. We represent competition for readership and the advertising money that makes the publishing industry a viable business. So why would they want to admit bloggers contribute much of anything besides stealing bandwidth? Yet on occasion, blogging can become a part of the media when it has gained enough readership. Its why Grantland, The Huffington Post, Bleacher Report, Deadspin are now often cited as news sources by even established news media agencies.
On November 23rd, I wrote an article about The Hockey News‘ Matt Larkin who produced an ‘exclusive’ list in the November 21st issue where he rated all 30 of the NHL’s fan bases using metrics that were amazingly similar to my own that I wrote in 2008, 2009 and 2010 respectively. I took him (and Yahoo!’s Puck Daddy, Greg Wyshynski) to task for that similarity here but I never once accused him or the Hockey News of plagiarism. Rather the focus was about receiving credit for the idea, as well as giving credit to others who also decided to rate all 30 of the NHL’s fan bases as I had done. With that being said, I would like to apologize profusely for not mentioning The Bleacher Report Michael Stuart‘s 2010 rating the 30 fan bases slideshow, just 2 months after I wrote my last fan base rating here at Bloguin. As was the case in 2008, I had no idea whether the article would elicit a response or even so much as a retweet on Twitter. I mean, why should I expect anyone to care about an issue like this.
Well, it got a response. From none other than Matt Larkin himself at around 11PM CST on December 3rd. I now submit to you that candid conversation, via Twitter in its entirety so you can judge it for yourself before I offer my two cents.
“Matt Larkin
@THNMattLarkin –@StateofHckyNews Give me a follow please, Derek.
Shortly thereafter I got this from Mr. Larkin via Twitter direct message:
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