Monday, February 11, 2013

What Is Loyola Student Dispatch's Function? News Middle Man?

DNAinfo.com Twitter Feed screen shot.

               In general Chevanston isn't sure of the point of certain twitter feeds. All it is are people retweeting news which the news organizations could be tweeting themselves.

Editors Note 1:20 pm -    John Versical brings up a good point, this is a question more than anything about the usage of photos than an official accusation of copyright infringement.  What is the  service that Loyola Student Dispatch provides besides copying and pasting sections of news articles, pictures and then reposting them?

                 Even if they are cleared by the original sources they are only official regurgitators then. They are watering down the news by being middle men. It does look odd however to post a photo that isn't yours without a subtitle giving the provenance. Yes there is a grey line between copyright infringement and fair use?




Loyola Student Dispatch screen shot with unlabeled photograph which
they probably didn't take unless they made a special trip to the Vatican.


                If you have your own news story then it makes sense to tweet it. If its not your news story then what is the point? You are just regurgitating it. It makes sense when the source of the news like Alderman Joe Moore's office releases tweets. But if its just your face and a sentence and a link to the news story, is there a point to that? Why doesn't DNAinfo.com have Twitter feeds coming in from the sources rather than the regurgitators?

                There are websites like Chicago Curbed that at least have an opinion about whatever they are reposting and they post their little opinion piece on it and then link to the story where you must go to the other site to read the whole story. That is what should be done here. Chicago Curbed is an example of what a hub for news should strive to be. They create their own news stories as well and highlight other people's news stories and photos via flickr and they give them credit for it. Just tweeting or retweeting stuff is meaningless.

             What if Chevanston decided to run their own pseudo story with Benjamin Woodard's photos and didn't give him credit? Well there would be hell to pay! (as well there should be).

6 comments:

Philip McGregor Rogers said...

Would it even be okay to run a story with Benjamin Woodard's pictures and credit is given?

There is no permission here. How about you take a picture of something priestly at Loyola and thats your picture.

Did Loyola Student Dispatch pay for this professional photo?

Unknown said...

You aware that there are archival photos that are both public access and pay per use for just about everything imaginable, right? DNAinfo, along with just about every other reputable news source uses these services to populate their stories, twitter feeds, Facebook pages, etc. Getty images is one of those services and they crowdsource professional photographs from around the world. Before you accuse anyone of copyright infringement, it would be wise to ask questions first. Or even do some research.

Philip McGregor Rogers said...

@ John V, but does that include the Loyola Student Dispatch?

Shouldn't they give credit to the photographer?

Why does Loyola Student Dispatch exist? It contributes no new content.

This isn't DNAinfo being majorly at fault but they should allow a "paper" to tweet their "news story" when nothing on it is original at all. What is Loyola Student Dispatch?

Philip McGregor Rogers said...

Also John you have to give credit if credit is due, to only argue against is not interesting.

Loyola Student Dispatch was wrong to reprint the almost entire article of the Chicago Tribune, is that not true?

Philip McGregor Rogers said...

There should be freedom to use information and photos to some degree on the internet. The laws can be cut ant dry, but the enforcement is murky.

But what Loyola News Dispatch is doing makes no sense at all.

"Loyola Student Dispatch
Bringing Breaking News to Loyola University Chicago"

It would be better if it said, copying and pasting a bunch of news for you.

Dispatch is used in real newspapers names. (Columbus Dispatch and St. Louis Post-Dispatch) It is disingenuous and misleading to use that name if you aren't a real newspaper or source of orginal news.

Philip McGregor Rogers said...

I can see the changes on the Loyola Dispatch already.

THANKS.
It will make for a more interesting site now!

Criticism is good, its feedback.

And Loyola Student Dispatch is looking MUCH BETTER now!