So for those who don’t know, internet types frequently use the term ‘blogspam’ to refer to articles that are republished on blogs. The concept of blogspam is problematic: any sort of republication of content from another site is often considered by many a ‘net denizen to be merely a waste of time; they’d much rather see the original article. This is both ironic and backwards given that our culture these days, especially in regards to media, loves the concept of fair use. That’s why a lot of us got so upset a while back when the MLB basically said that fair use doesn’t exist online.
To say we’re talking of fair use is a bit misleading as it’s not fair use in the legal, “do I pay royalties or not” sense, but rather in the sense of citation. Anyone who’s gone to high school knows about citation – you find a fact and use it to argue a point.
This is the real difference between content aggregators and blogs. The former, sites like Slashdot and Techmeme and Digg, just present materials online and link to them. They themselves do not add anything of value to the existing material, aside from directing users to related work. Blogs, however, are very much in the content added business. So when a piece of news comes across the desks of the authors here at Techgeist, we don’t just reprint it.
The reason why we don’t just reprint is because there’s usually something to add to the story. For example, Dow Jones reported that the FCC was investigating Apple’s rejection of a Google Voice application. My story passed along the news, but then extrapolated – I talked about why the FCC is investigating. That’s not just a Techgeist-exclusive thing, but what any good blog should do.
The concept of having outlets which analyze the news and give different angles is absolutely critical. The dangers of only leaving analysis to the first news outlets which get stories out the door are obvious. Imagine if some incredibly partisan group funneled all media into the world. Things would be skewed to a point of insanity. But given that for the most part, the people who cover any sort of news span a spectrum of ideas and philosophies, what the masses are ultimately left with is a picture which overall is pretty balanced. Blogs provide this functionality very well, and that’s really all blogs provide.
That leaves sites which frequently break stories, and you know what? Those aren’t blogs. Those are news outlets. Sure, they’re not as big as the New York Times, but size does not a newsroom make. If ThatWebsite.com is where a very large number of people is hearing about a story for the first time, then ThatWebsite.com is a news outlet.
So when reading any blog, I encourage readers to not think of what they’re reading the same way they would a news ticker. Blogs are where you’ll find opinions and analysis, and frequently a lot of the blogs you read will be writing about the same sorts of news. If all you’re getting is a synopsis of another site’s writing, then it’s spam, not to mention plagiarism. But if the old story was used to as a foundation for a new idea, then the article itself is something new.
