Mail Online: Heavy Lifting

Mail Online 'exclusive,' June 6th - a re-run of GT's interview

Mail Online's whole strategy is based on reproducing the work of every other media organisation in order to ensure that it becomes a one-stop shop for surfers.

To that end, its staff are required to scour every newspaper, magazine and website in order to copy off articles.

They do obey certain rules. The original source is credited fairly high up and most often there is also a hyperlink.

As far as Mail Online's editorial overlord, Martin Clarke, is concerned that covers him legally and ethically. He therefore rejects accusations of theft and of breaching copyright...

Several Mail Onliners have told me they hate doing it. ("I didn't come into journalism to rip off other journalists," one told me). But he, in company with others, pointed out that jobs are exceedingly hard to come by (and they are still paid more than most local and regional reporters and subs).

So they are, to an extent, being exploited in order to perform a task that exploits the work of other journalists. There, in a nutshell, is the nature of this shoddy enterprise.

Meanwhile, Mail Online thrives because it gets the clicks from people who are utterly disinterested in how it gathers its content. They merely consume it...

Roy Greenslade in Media Guardian. 

PS Don't write in and say this is basically what Fagburn does, like here for example.