Loyola Student Dispatch Reprints Chicago Tribune Article & Tweets It On Rival DNAinfo.com's Twitter Feed.

Scapegoat or true culprit?
Photo credit - Chevanston Enterprises 2013.

                 This story about S & C possibly being involved in the Superbowl power outage was first covered by the Chicago Tribune on February 8th and it was tweeted by the Loyola Student Dispatch on the 10th on DNAinfo.com. The Loyola Student Dispatch copied and pasted most of the Tribune article which was written by Samantha Bomkamp.  They also used Gary Hershorn's photograph of this event without giving him credit and probably without his permission.

Please continue reading for full story.




               Copyright infringement with the photograph and a reprint of something that isn't theirs. Sure they link everything up and disclose that its the Tribune's material but they don't put the true author's name on the piece. Also if you aren't putting much commentary or adding to the story what is the point?. The following is all that the Loyola Student Dispatch added to their "story".

Rogers Park firm in spotlight over Super Bowl power outage

Posted by loyolastudentdispatch on February 10, 2013

Who’s to blame for the lights going out at the Super Bowl?

An electrical switch company in Rogers Park finds itself at the center of the controversy, although it says it’s not at fault.

Here is the story from the Chicago Tribune:

             Also this article is listed along with other stories under a heading entitled "top scoops". Reprinting someone's else story whole cloth is not a scoop. It's the Tribune's scoop. How does the Tribune benefit from a paper copying and pasting their article and linking it up and then tweeting it for them? There is no author listed because essentially nothing was written by Loyola Student Dispatch.Also if you link to the LSD you will see that the quoted part from the Tribune wasn't indented as it should be and it wasn't italicized. Which really should be the case if this really is a "professional" outfit. The Tribune needs to be tweeting its own news or someone should just directly tweet it. The following is the rest of the "article" from the LSD.

An electrical relay device supplied by Rogers Park’s S&C Electric Co. was found to be at the center of the Super Bowl power outage in New Orleans.

S&C Electric Co. said the outage, which lasted for more than 30 minutes at Sunday’s game, happened when the demand for Superdome power exceeding a “trip setting” for its electrical relay.

But the device didn’t malfunction, S&C said. Instead, it said it found in testing that system operators didn’t account for the amount of power needed at the Superdome. S&C doesn’t control the power settings on its equipment.

S&C wouldn’t go into more details, but the power provider for Sunday’s game was Entergy New Orleans, a unit of Entergy Corp.In a statement, Entergy said the relay device had functioned properly at other high-profile sporting events, including the Sugar Bowl.

The relay was designed to prevent an outage if a cable connection to the stadium failed.”S&C continues to work with all those involved to get the system back online, and our customers can continue to  rely on the quality and performance of our products,” Spokesman Michael Edmonds said in a statement.

S&C equipment is commonly used where high reliability is critical, he said, including data centers for United Parcel Service Inc., drug manufacturing centers and hospitals. The company also works with other stadiums throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Entergy said in a statement that the Superdome relay has been removed and replacement equipment is being examined.

That statement came before a special meeting of the New Orleans City Council’s Utility Committee Friday morning to discuss the root cause of the outage.

Immediately after the game, Entergy indicated its equipment was functional and the problem must have come from the Superdome, but later said it was launching an investigation to determine the source of the problem.

“While some further analysis remains, we believe we have identified and remedied the cause of the power outage and regret the interruption that occurred during what was a showcase event for the city and state,” Entergy New Orleans President and CEO Charles Rice said.

               What if the Tribune had its own Twitter feed and then some student run organization from Loyola or whoever decided to copy most of a DNAinfo.com article and put their own title on it  and use whatever photo it felt like (no credit to the professional  photographer) and then tweet it and then put it under their list of "top scoops"? Pretty sure that Benjamin Woodard would be pissed if it was his article and so would the elder Mr Ricketts of TD Ameritrade. So what's up? Chevanston ran into the murky waters of copyright infringement and learned its lesson. Sounds like the Loyola Student Dispatch needs to learn its lesson. Copying and pasting an article from the paper of record for Chicago, The Tribune is unacceptable. The following is the entire article from the Tribune.

                 

Power relay from local supplier at fault in Super Bowl outage

February 08, 2013|By Samantha Bomkamp | Tribune reporter

An electrical relay device supplied by Rogers Park's S&C Electric Co. was found to be at the center of the Super Bowl power outage in New Orleans, the company said Friday.

S&C Electric Co. said the outage, which lasted for more than 30 minutes at Sunday's game, happened when the demand for Superdome power exceeding a "trip setting" for its electrical relay.

But the device didn't malfunction, S&C said. Instead, it said it found in testing that system operators didn't account for the amount of power needed at the Superdome. S&C doesn't control the power settings on its equipment.

S&C wouldn't go into more details, but the power provider for Sunday's game was Entergy New Orleans, a unit of Entergy Corp.

In a statement, Entergy said the relay device had functioned properly at other high-profile sporting events, including the Sugar Bowl.

The relay was designed to prevent an outage if a cable connection to the stadium failed.

"S&C continues to work with all those involved to get the system back online, and our customers can continue to rely on the quality and performance of our products," Spokesman Michael Edmonds said in a statement.

S&C equipment is commonly used where high reliability is critical, he said, including data centers for United Parcel Service Inc., drug manufacturing centers and hospitals. The company also works with other stadiums throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Entergy said in a statement that the Superdome relay has been removed and replacement equipment is being examined.

That statement came before a special meeting of the New Orleans City Council's Utility Committee Friday morning to discuss the root cause of the outage.

Immediately after the game, Entergy indicated its equipment was functional and the problem must have come from the Superdome, but later said it was launching an investigation to determine the source of the problem.

"While some further analysis remains, we believe we have identified and remedied the cause of the power outage and regret the interruption that occurred during what was a showcase event for the city and state," Entergy New Orleans President and CEO Charles Rice said.

sbomkamp@tribune.com | Twitter: @SamWillTravel 

                   In regards to the Superbowl snafu it makes sense that the electric company and equipment manufacturers would point the fingers at each other. Hopefully they can figure out what really happened. Likely it was a combination of factors like most things in life. Its like trying to determine the cause of death, not always so cut and dry, even after an autopsy. It takes a massive amount of power to light a stadium the size of the Superdome so it was be extremely strange if something didn't fail eventually.

Another Chevanston exclusive photo.

                The main reason that Chevanston wrote this story is, its really really boring to read reprints of someone else's story and to look at someone else's photos. We know you didn't go to the Superbowl how about using pictures of S & C like thus? And how about LSD just write something up of their own? Use some quotes, use italics and to be really correct the quotes should be indented as above. No one is perfect, whoever did this is likely college age. Now is the time to learn that copyright infringement is illegal and its boring. And copying and pasting an article isn't a "scoop". The writers, reporters, and photographer's work hard and they deserve to get paid for what they do. Taking their work and tweeting it for them under your paper is a huge slap in the face to these professionals (especially when they aren't given proper credit).

                If you are going to just tweet this article then it should have only contained what LSD had written and then you go to the Tribune page directly (if they weren't going to add anything to the story). And really when you get down to it how is this any different from Kyle Hillman, RogersParker or Gerald Farinas just adding their little quip and adding a link to the Tribune in their individual tweet? That's what should be done if you aren't adding anything of substance to this material. Tweet the original article not the "reblogged" article.

                Below is the screenshot of the Loyola Dispatch's story, no author, no photographer. Its a news story, isn't that usually who contributes to one of those.

           Below this is a screenshot of RP1000 words blog, an example where the Loyola Dispatch has direct feeds touting breaking news which is just a reprint of the Tribune article.

              Below is the Twitter page of Loyola Student Dispatch. Twitter is dangerous because people sign up for direct feeds content. This article is really nothing new from the Loyola Dispatch. Its like a good way to just become a pirate newspaper.