Here is a common scenario among bloggers who write about their local communities: they have a variety of news sources to choose from when they're citing a local story.
For example, in Minneapolis we have two large local daily newspapers, 4 TV stations, quite a few radio stations that do news, including a very strong public radio station. If something is newsworthy locally, every single on of these media outlets will surely cover it.
So what happens when local bloggers decide they want to comment on the story?
In a perfect world, I can imaging bloggers doing one of two things: either embedding a video from the TV station's website for use on their own site or grabbing a photo from the newspaper's site for use with their story. In both cases, it would be appropriately cited, linked, etc.
But what happens in the real world today? Neither. Why? Because no site provides embeddable news stories or easily sharable photos today.
Who thinks that bloggers would be more likely to write about stories from a news source that had easily embeddable content? My hand is raised.
1. Posted by: Davis Freeberg on February 13, 2008 1:48 AM:
Exactly, if you make me set up a DVR to move my files to a computer where I then have to transcode and edit the file, before I'll have to risk breaking the law by uploading it to the net, then it's going to have to be about something that I care an awful lot about before I'd even consider going through the trouble.
On the other hand, if my local news station had video of something that affected me locally, I'd probably put it on my site and comment on it. If you embed ads in the file, I don't see how it can hurt them to let people share the content. It's a free distribution network.
The old newspapers were all about exclusivity and control over the content, but this doesn't work for the internet. People are going to steal your content anyway, you may as well at least make it easy for them to give you credit. Instead of trying to protect exclusive stories and images, they should give them away and take advantage of the SEO and traffic that results from it.