9 Out Of 10 Mainstream News Stories Are Copied
Mar 15th, 2010 | By James Lewin | Category: Citizen Media, General 
Blogging – and new media in general – has often been criticized as being derivative.
Here are some stats, via the Nieman Journalism Lab, that may put that criticism in perspective:
- 9 out of ten mainstream news stories are copied. In the stories analyzed (from publications like Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, The New York Times and NPR) only 11 percent contained some amount of original reporting.
- Only six percent were primarily based on original reporting.
- 12 of the new stories mentioned no source or did provide attribution.
- Google News ranks original reporting fairly high in its list. Google says they rank stories based on criteria such as the reputation of a source, number of references by other articles, and the headline clickthrough rate and this appears to work fairly well.
As people ponder the fate of news organizations, these sort of statistics are going to become extremely important.
If 9 out of 10 mainstream news stories are basically copies, there’s a massive opportunity to do things more efficiently.
And the ubiquity and instantaneousness of the Internet are forcing the issue – hard.
Image: Explorer Björn
The article doesn’t say how many of those stats include the Associated Press and the like stories which supply stories for news outlets.
There’s a table in the Nieman report that has a breakdown of the sourcing. Looks like a lot of organizations reuse NYT coverage.
It can get old reading recycled news but it really should’nt be a competetion to see who breaks the story.That is a mindset of yesteryear and newspapers especially are finding this out.
News is news. Its suppose to be spread around . There is so much happening in the world that its rare it seems that there is one big breaking story.
And when there is , the network tv people will turn it into a mini-series and keep trying to keep it alive long after most have lost interest.
Newspapers and TV media recycle stories because the newly evolved reporters are actually devolving mindless thugs who have no clue how to dig for a REAL story. It’s pathetic. People are so tired of the boring recycled stories and for goodness sakes enough with the boring boring boring stories on angelina jolie, bratt pitt and jennifer aniston. WHO cares!!!! They are OLD news. Bring us something FRESH and exciting. Something you don’t see everyday. And the Kardashians, oh, blah. Huge heffner’s chicks, so old. Literally. This is joke man. WHO watches this stupid stuff? Stupid people. Alas, we know.
thugs who have no clue how to dig for a REAL story. It’s pathetic. People are so tired of the boring recycled stories and for goodness sakes enough with the boring boring boring stories on angelina jolie, bratt pitt and jennifer aniston. WHO cares!!!! They are OLD news. Bring us something FRESH and exciting. Something you don’t see everyday. And the Kardashians