When The Boston Globe launched a hyperlocal news site for suburban Newton in November, the paper seemed like a late adopter of an already common practice: aggregating articles, blog posts, and other content about Newton from a variety of sources across the web. No big deal.
Instead, the Globe quickly drew a lawsuit from GateHouse Media, which owns the weekly newspaper in Newton and dozens of other eastern Massachusetts towns where the Globe plans to launch similar sites under the Your Town brand. (It has already rolled them out in Waltham and Needham.) GateHouse claims that the Globe, which is owned by The New York Times Co., is committing copyright infringement by republishing the headline and first graf of many news articles and blog posts from GateHouse newspapers. There are a number of other claims in the lawsuit, including trademark infringement and unfair competition, but the upshot is that GateHouse wants the Globe to stop aggregating and linking to its content.
I’m serious. If you blog, you need to be following GateHouseGate.
The Recovering Journalist has more on this from a post from last month that sets it up, and here is more commentary from Nieman.
Similar Posts:
- Headlines and Titles–Writing for Reader AND Search Engines
- The Grey Lady
- Do Journalists Deserve Low Pay?
- How News Organizations Can Get My Money
- Think The New Media is Bound to Dominate?
WANT TO READ MORE?