Is the Tampa Tribune stealing bloggers’ work?
by Alex Pickett
Sure looks that way.
Tina Dupuy is a freelance writer and blogger from L.A. She recently sent an op-ed piece to the Tampa Tribune for possible publishing. Well, the Tribune did publish the piece, but never paid Dupuy for it. So she made this video:
Unfortunately, this is no isolated incident. The Tribune has also stolen posts from Michael Hussey’s Pushing Rope blog. Litbrit had a small post copied word for word with no byline, too. And last month, the Tribune did the same thing with my entire post on Charlie Crist and his congenial letter to some neo-nazis. Although these are the only instances I know about, it seems reasonable to conclude they’ve done this to other bloggers who didn’t catch on.
Michael Hussey has contacted the Tribune editors about the plagarism, but they have yet to reply.
Even if there is no copyright infringement here, which I find hard to believe, Tribune editors should regard stealing bloggers’ work as unethical and unbecoming of a huge news organization that brings in millions of dollars a year.
Anyone else have similar experiences?
UPDATE (9/8/09): The Tribune finally noticed all the negative attention and agreed to pay Dupuy. Read about it here. Also, they edited the stolen blog posts on their site to just excerpts, so I changed one of my links above to a cached version of the post they copied from me.
spt and tampa trib ALWAYS steal my stuff. Even from the comments. ALWAYS. Then they will not publish the comment they steal and after the plagiarization they then will not publish the comment which mentions plagiarization. Rebecca catalanelo is the one who did the wrongest.
They’re masonic run. AND scientologilical. They expose scientology in one breath and have HUGE ADS which advertise scientology all over the place. Please. Integrity bone DROOPING.
As expected the creative loafing stalker is hovering. Luckily her kids creep a lot of people out so it’s kinda funny. LOL.
Oh, tbo.com has taken at least a dozen articles from me over the last few months. Especially, since my work is political.
UPDATE: Michael Hussey has started a Facebook page to bring together bloggers with this problem:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=260977055213&ref=ts
[...] Is the Tampa Tribune stealing bloggers’ work? [...]
You own the copyright. What about everyone suing them in small claims court for payment and apology?
[...] June, Michael Hussey noticed a post of his was republished on TBO.com. And then just last week Alex Pickett and zencomix Dave – a couple of other writers from the Pushing Rope blog network – [...]
I think the Tribune’s defense is something like: “Anyone who sees our product would know we’re not a real newspaper, more like an advertising flier, and therefore not subject to all these silly rules/guidelines about attribution and paying for a copy.”
A letter to Janet Coats, Vice President of the Tampa Tribune, regarding the illegal use of my intellectual property.
http://bit.ly/3aYteg