Has Journalism Jumped The Shark?

Gulf News (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I noticed a story in Gulf News today about Google's cancelled Nexus 7 launch event, which was to have taken place in New York to rival Microsoft's San Francisco Windows Phone 8 event. The gig's been canned because of Hurricane Sandy. The story stood out for me because it was filed under a local byline yet quoted a Forrester Analyst, Sarah Rotman Epps. Epps is a frequently quoted commentator in major US media, so it's quite impressive to find Gulf News quoting her.

In fact,  a quick Google later and we have this story in the New York Times which not only carries Epps' comments but also contains many similar words and phrases to the GN story, which is a summary of the current hotly competitive tablet market. Gulf News doesn't credit the NYT in its story or cite it as the source of Epps' quote.

Google, Apple’s fiercest competitor, recently released its 7-inch Nexus 7 tablet for $200. Amazon recently introduced seven new Kindles, including a 7-inch tablet for $160 and an 8.9-inch tablet for $300. Barnes & Noble’s Nook tablet, which starts at $200, has also sold well. Combined, the three companies have sold about 15 million of these smaller, cheaper tablets, according to estimates by Forrester Research.  
New York Times

Google, Apple’s fiercest competitor, recently released its 7-inch Nexus 7 tablet for $200. And Amazon recently introduced seven new Kindles, including a 7-inch tablet for $160 and an 8.9-inch tablet for $300. Barnes and Noble’s Nook tablet, which starts at $200, has also sold well. Combined, the three companies have sold about 15 million of these smaller, cheaper tablets, according to estimates by Forrester. 
Gulf News

Googling one phrase from the story, which didn't sound very GN 'entrench a 49 per cent share', gets yet more interesting results and another three paragraphs 'lifted' from tech blog Know Your Mobile. The search is here - looky at results one an' two!(This search no longer works - see update below).

But Gulf News is by no means alone in producing stories based on a quick Google, a re-hash of news reports and the odd cut and paste. Just that cursory look into a hooky sounding story in GN shows that chunks of information out there are getting copied and pasted all the time. Why bother hunting down a source to quote when you can just camp select and sling in a sneaky CTRL C CTRL V? Why research a story when you can just mix up some rumours from tech blogs (forgetting to quote them, particularly if they're not particularly authoritative) and have it rehashed and popped into the old CMS in a couple of minutes?

I can remember local journalists complaining that PRs made them lazy by providing them with content on a plate - and my fury that they didn't use press releases as releases were intended to be used - as a source of information from which to build a story rather than as something to run verbatim. Well, now it's not PRs but Google - and as a result original content gives way to cut and paste journalism that masks its sources and gives credence to the incredible. Repeated verbatim, passed on from news source to news source. The same facts, the same truths, parroted without ever going through a filter of reality checking or qualitative assessment.

Welcome to The New Journalism.

Update. Gulf News has reacted to the above post by quietly posting an update of the offending story with the paragraphs referred to above removed and NYT credited for the Rotman Eps quote. The updated story is linked here.