Since about 6:12 p.m. on Monday I have been a little red in the rectal area.
As some of you regular readers may be aware a "local" television station ripped us off on Monday (not for the first time) by taking a story we published on Sunday and basically using it verbatim (along with some "footage" interview) about a local woman's successful quest in tracking down a hit-and run driver.
They aired it at 6:12 p.m. Monday about 24-hours after we broke the story.
There is no need to rehash all the details at this point. You can go back to our website and hit the number "page back" feature to read the story we published on Sunday (currently it's on Page 4). You can also see the original video on their website (before they made changes in the transcription to cover their asses).
Compare the two and tell me what you think.
The bottom line?The real brains of this operation (my wife) probably prevented me from BEING in Mugshots (and opposed to publishing them) because I had a business meeting in northwest Arkansas on Tuesday anyway and my intention was to go to the new home they are so proud of and break one of these four-toed feet in somebody's ass.
She talked me down on the drive up.
Look...I have been magnanimous about this for months. Time and time again we have broken a story or written a feature and the next thing you know ol "Second on the Scene" is breathlessly reporting the same story like they got a scoop instead of a tip from us.
This digital news business is a weird animal. Between the bunghole chating me out of money with the initial website I basically birthed to the past 20-months of riding herd on this place, I feel like I have seen and done it all.
All of us in the "news business" get basically he same information and from that information it's our job to create a news story or a feature that will appeal to and draw in readers.
The more readers you have the more exposure you can offer to marketing partners and potential advertisers. And that's what it's all about. (Not the hokey pokey.)
Nobody in radio, television, print or even digital media is doing this for their health. Lord knows I have been ramrodding this rodeo for multiple months for an an average of about .65 cents an hour but I'm building this thing from scratch.
It takes time. You have to have the readers to justify taking money from people to put their business in front of potential customer. At least if you have an ounce of integrity, that's the way you approach it.
So we have boot-strapped Today in Fort Smith. We recently added Today in Northwest Arkansas to the mix and we will have an announcement in August about our new site, Today in ????????...and while we are spider-webbing into these other markets, our business model will always revolve around what we have determined is our Fort Smith demographic area.
As I said above all of us in the "news business" get basically the same information...some get it spoon fed to us by entities that give them preferential treatment, some get tips from viewers, listeners, and readers and some just blunder through coat-tailing off other people's work. Some of us reach out over and over again to our developed sources and contacts and utilize public record to get our content.
There are times when coverage is just going to overlap.
For example, we do not publish any details about a fatal car wreck until the Arkansas State Police throws up a preliminary report on their website. A lot of times we may already have all of the information -including the victims name - but none of our sites are going to have someone read that their loved one is gone without proper notification from authorities.
That may sound like little thing, but...let's say your spouse or child hops on a motorcycle and - God forbid - gets involved in a fatal wreck. We may throw up a Breaking News alert saying "police are working an accident with possible injuries" in order for people to be able to avoid the area while police and first responders do their work.
But...I have seen "local" television stations report the accident on their newscast and detail the time of the accident, the make and model of the motorcycle and the exact location of the accident. Everything but the victim's name.
If your loved one left for work at 6 am and had an accident eight minutes later, do you want a smiling face on the morning wake-up crew telling you "a man riding a 2016 Harley Davidson was killed this morning" on such-and-such road at 6:08 a.m. - on a 2016 Harley Davidson?
It's unprofessional. Sensationalistic. And a little bit ghoulish. All over a desire to be "first".
There are times when we are not first. There are times we get a tip or see something online and by the time we do our due diligence that leads to writing and posting the story after checking the facts, others got the jump on us. It's the nature of the beast.
A lot of stuff we don't even bother to cover, especially if it's on "the real news" locally (man...it pisses me off when people say that) first because I don't want to be perceived as playing "follow the leader".
And I have no problem with someone seeing something on our Facebook page or website and running with it if it's a "tip" to them (we all do it...some of us just admit it) but at least have the integrity not to use our headline as your package lead-in on the story.
Funny thing...the lady in the story in question had reached out to "Second on the Scene" several days before I finally wrote the story. They turned her flat down.
At first, I wasn't going to mess with it, because I was pissed she went to them first. But I relented and wrote the story...and here comes a television station within a multi-million dollar news operation run by a confederacy of dunces to jump on the bandwagon after I did all the work reporting all of the work she did to track down the suspect in the first place.
Kissing me without buying me dinner is one thing. Trying to kiss me after I paid for dinner, bussed the table and washed the dishes is another thing all together. (In this instance "kiss" is a euphemism for another four-letter word.)
The victim in this called me before she agreed to do the interview with #fake5news. Wanted to know what I thought about her granting them the interview. I said "do it" because it puts more focus on the situation.
She said she would mention TIFS and make them promise to give us credit. I had a belly laugh on the "credit part".
She said she would tell them they couldn't use it without giving us credit. I laughed again. She said she used our name at last four times while the camera was rolling and came out of the interview feeling "assured" they would give us credit.
By now, I'm laughing so hard I can barely breath.
She called them back after the fact to complain. The response was "we don't mention competitors on the air". They left out the part that they don't mind stealing from competitors. And they flatter themselves if they think they're competitors with us in the first place.
We don't have to get people to fawn all over us for rolling up our sleeves. We roll them up and go to work everyday.
Turns out other people have had experiences about being lied to or mislead to agree to go on camera. Imagine that...so you're saying they have NO integrity?
Some folks I am petty and being "butt hurt" over nothing. We have lost people who were followers of the page because I finally decided to stand up and say enough is enough.
Fortunately, we have had a net gain of 57 page followers since Monday, so you sixteen that left (or got banned) won't be missed.
Am I going to let it go? Nope...not at least until I get an apology. And if you as a reader don't like that, then feel fee to leave and go sign-up and get your news from Johnson. In Washington County. Just don't expect to get much news from below the Hopper Tunnel.
Unless we write it for them.
Today in Johnson...LOL. Kind of has a nice ring to it.
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