To Rehash Or Not To Rehash?

map of Rogers Park - Evanston border

Retreading, reblogging, regurgitating et cetera makes for a boring Twitter search. Especially without a new angle, viewpoint or info. Yes it will get more hits for your site. But are you contributing anything new? You aren't. You are getting the word out on a particular story (which will happen anyways by all the dedicated retweeters out there and twitter 'bots). Some sites aren't even quoting the original source. Nothing new in news (TV). Now its just clogged with more pseudo news outlets.

In this case The Chicago Tribune got the scoop. They published at 6:03 pm that a cold case had just been solved. An Evanston man has just been captured after DNA evidence linked him to the 1988 murder of a Rogers Park woman. Pseudo news organizations got the word out via Twitter. West Loop News, Chicago City and Press, Chicago News.

Then the reblogs come. Evanston Now's and Evanston Review's (Evanston's Sun Times) stories are both a la Loyola News Dispatch; they write their own intro and then tell you to read the Chicago Tribune's piece. Then the Sun-Times wire through Fox News run their article at 6:57 pm. DNAinfo.com's article follows closely at 7:15 pm. These last two have no reference to the Trib.

Why so much duplication on the net? Just have a section for scoops or retweets from other online sources. Perhaps a ludicrous suggestion (it will never happen). But all this manpower just to rewrite the same story over and over is a waste (even just for an intro).

Last edited 12/12/13 9:09 pm