Unreliable Narrators! TechCrunch Blogger Inserted ‘Random Information (Sometimes Even False)’ Into Posts
Here’s Betabeat trying to whip you into a froth about MG Siegler saying this:
I used to love to plant one really weird bit of random information (sometimes even false) into stories to catch the rewrites.
Apparently ReadWriteWeb wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing, and neither would GigaOm. This might be somehow froth-worthy if it was anything new. If the New Oxford American Dictionary hadn’t done it, or if Britain’s Ordinance Survey didn’t contain deliberate errors, and if various other maps, encyclopedias, dictionaries, writers and, yes, bloggers didn’t do it. It’s called a copyright trap, and writers have been doing it for years.
Of course, the reason the above-mentioned seem so surprised and wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing — Betabeat included — is because their business model would suffer if someone cried plagiarism every time they rewrote an article. In this brave new world of journalism you lead by example, and the example to set is flagrant disregard for copyright and knowing fuck all about anything.
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