HOLY EFFING CHRIST
so, DCist (specifically, me, ubergoddess that i am) broke a story (i think, anyways; we were at least the first media outlet to report it) about congressman bonilla wanting to rename 16th st nw "ronald reagan boulevard." 12:58 p.m.
come 7:09 p.m., the washington post has the story. on their front page. the part where they cite us?:
Rep. Henry Bonilla, co-chairman of the 2000 and 2004 Republican National Conventions, quietly introduced a 103-word resolution before Congress adjourned for summer recess July 28. As word spread in the nation's capital, neighborhood Web logs in the overwhelmingly Democratic city crackled with disbelief...
ummm.
okay.
I AM GOING TO FUCK YOUR SHIT UP, SPENCER S. HSU!
UPDATE: the story has moved from being solely on the site to being a metro section front page article tomorrow morning. nicely played, jackasses.
sorry if my rage seems excessive, but the Post has steadfastly ignored DCist (except for maybe two offhand mentions in non-major stories; this, even as they are constantly featuring other blogs). i KNOW they can't actually think of us as a competitor, so why the hateration? the fact that D.C. has the second-biggest site in the -ist network is a story in its own right. so many angles...
UPDATE II: not to mention they completely ignored our Borf coverage. i don't claim that DCist was the only place to ever recognize the value of the Borf story, but we OWNED Borf coverage long before the big post style section front page article on him. even then, we only merited a mention as "local blogs," etc. frankly, it's kind of infuriating. and frankly, i'm a little drunk.
Comments
You go, girl. $20 says Hsu is a diminutive 22-year-old nerdboy who doesn't get to the gym. You can totally take him. On multiple levels.
That's absurd. At least the word is out, though. Good that you're drunk also.
How did you find that tidbit of information?
And why aren't you going into print journalism? You're obviously much more cut out for it than, say, me.
i read it in an online music forum that i lurk in. some people were bitching about it there, and then i checked it out on thomas.loc.gov to make sure it was true.
i guess in the morning i'm not as upset as i was last night. obviously the post's story is way better than ours, because they are able to do actual reporting and follow up calls and get quotes from the key people, etc, and we're not because we don't have the time/resources. but it's pretty blatantly obvious that they read it on DCist and went from there. no other media had this story before we did (and the bill's been around since July 28; if they knew about it before it was on DCist, then they would have reported about it before). i guess i should at least be happy to know that local media reads DCist.
and print journalism - it just never captured me. i'm sure i'll have to do a fair amount of it at northwestern, but i'd rather think about new business models for online journalism and strategies than report. i do like yelling and being bitchy, though, if that plays a part.
For what it's worth, I thought DCist did a great job breaking the story, and I gave credit where it was due on my blog.
I've been snubbed by DCist once; I broke the report that Freda Sorce had died in the comments section of DCist, and didn't receive a hat tip the next day in Kaniska's post.
yeah, it wouldn't have killed the post to credit... but it's not such a huge deal. might be worth trying to avoid burning bridges, too.
red line, thanks for the compliment. i think the freda story was a bit different though, as lots of media outlets were reporting the story simultaneously.
tom: you think i'm burning bridges by complaining about it? well, next time you are developing a grease monkey script, or whatever, and someone larger than you steals it w/o credit, i'm sure you won't mind.
well, I would be upset, but if it was my aspiration to one day go work for them, I might not make a public fuss out of it.
well, maybe. and you're right, it's not that big a deal in the relative scheme of things. but it is telling in the attitude towards blogs...i feel as if it had been a smaller paper that had broken the story, they would have credited them. why not DCist? how easy would it have been to say, "the story, which was first posted on local blog DCist..."?
Red Line: Sorry! That was unintentional.
I think Catherine's biggest gripe (and mine) here is the "neighborhood web logs" line in the Post story, which quite frankly is a big effing insult. If the term blog wasn't mentioned, I'd actually be less insulted; instead, the story reads like "Hey, DCist, we read your site but we'll only hint at that on the sly wink wink nudge nudge." It's like getting invited to dinner, except you have to eat leftovers in the kitchen.
yes, exactly.
and as for making a big fuss: well, that's just my MO. i'm constantly easily offended. maybe not the wisest idea, but i also find that causing a ruckus is more likely to get you noticed than anything else.
Do you want a ticker-tape parade? Trust me, sweetie, EVERY writer/journalist worth his or her salt has broken a story and not been credited before--most of us break our teeth on that little lesson during freshman year of college.
I would congratulate you on a rite of passage, but it seems you're trying to do this for recognition/"glory" rather than love of honest-to-goodness writing and information sharing. I can hardly toast the right of passage of a writer who's not going anywhere.
OK, calm it, Bean.
Well, that kind of sucks, Catherine, but I can also see how WaPo would hesitate to cite a blog as "first source" on anything. MSM is still figuring out how to DEAL with blogs...it would be understandable that a MSM outlet wouldn't cite a blog as "first source" because blogs piggyback on each other ALL the time; it's within reason to assume that DCist had gotten it from someone else first.
what? okay. yes, northwestern j-school on a full scholarship is nowhere. thanks for your comment, bean. and lala, thanks too. i mostly agree with you.
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