This is not a criticism of AnnArbor.com, just an observation. If there is any major change in the relationship between news competitors it is not better observed than an article on AnnArbor.com this morning, which simply links to a Detroit Free Press sports story.
In the previous model, the sports department would scramble to mine its sources and come up with a story of its own on such a major event. Now it appears the attitude is one of surrender. We got scooped, let's not waste time, we'll just admit we missed a story and run the competition's story.
It's hard for old journalism minds like mine to wrap around this kind of reporting, but I'm willing to believe with the staff shrinkage, probably inevitable.
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And only three local hard news stories posted in today's edition as of 9:12 a.m.
In the bad old days, if you lifted from another source, you were ... well, fired.
Brave new world.
It's not lifting if you attribute, which linking is more than suitable attribution.
Not saying it's better than the old days, but to say it's "lifting" implies that someone is copying and not sourcing it, which is inaccurate. I think being inaccurate would be a sin in the good old days or any day.
Whatever you call it, it's intellectually lazy and pointless. Why does the world need AnnArbor.com to play middleman when readers can go directly to the Detroit dailies ... or any other primary news sources for that matter?
Inky -- I was schooled on this yesterday by a youngster at the FJ. It's not laziness -- it's "aggregating."
The problem is that while the youngsters at the Flint Journal are busy aggregating other people's work -- or whatever else it is that the editors have them doing -- they are squandering a franchise they have sole ownership of: local news.
Oh to be a corrupt politican in Flint-Saginaw-Bay City these days. You could steal everything that isn't nailed down and not one editor or reporter would know or care.
I'd add Ann Arbor to that list but the Chronicle would likely uncover it. AnnArbor.com? Not so much. Maybe they'd "aggregate" coverage from the Chronicle or the Detroit papers.
I live in Ann Arbor. I do not read annarbor.com more than once or twice a week. I don't read its newspaper, to which I subscribe, because I've seen 90 percent of the stories 1 or 2 or 3 days earlier at the Web site.
I truly do feel disconnected from my own city. The stories are written with too much subjective commentary and not nearly enough "meat and potatoes", too bloggy of an atmosphere for my taste.
I wonder what the readership of annarbor.com is?
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