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Friday, August 8, 2008

The Napster of Newspapers

posted by on August 8 at 10:30 AM

Slate has a bizarre article about a newspaper—the Montgomery County Bulletin, circulation 20,000—behaving like a blog. An ill-behaved blog that aggregates content without links and attribution.

Over the course of three years, stories from Rolling Stone, Slate, the Boston Globe, USA Today, the Guardian, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune were all reprinted—slightly altered—in the Bulletin, sometimes under the byline “Mark Williams,” sometimes under no byline at all.

The Bulletin lists just five employees—”Mark Williams,” a calendar editor, a sales person, and the publisher, who was reluctant to cooperate with Slate on the story.

The publisher’s name? A fake-sounding “Mike Ladyman.”

And the simulacrum is complete.

RSS icon Comments

1

Information just wants to be free.

Posted by Will in Seattle | August 8, 2008 11:05 AM
2

If Eli wrote this post it would have been a huuuuge blockquote followed by a link under his name.

only a slight difference of journalistic criminality

Posted by Non | August 8, 2008 11:50 AM
3

I would guess that a DMCA complaint to ValueWeb, the Bulletin's web host, would make the site go away pretty quickly.

Posted by John | August 8, 2008 12:08 PM
4

It already shut down.

Posted by hohoho green giant | August 8, 2008 3:21 PM

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