A respected journalist pal of mine, who doesn’t want his name used for a number of good reasons, had a couple of worthy thoughts related to the Hartford Courant aggregation fiasco. I’ll paraphrase:

The Courant’s key mistake was how they conceived of their “aggregation” efforts. Content Manager Jeff Levine’s recent note mentions that they were using the Google News model. Not so.  Google News is a pure aggregator – it supplies links to original stories on the original Websites. The Courant, of course, wanted the benefit of aggregation (local content) without directing viewers off their site and to other sites. So, as one of Naedine’s memos points out, they created their own AP-like system that rewrites other people’s content with a Courant byline. The difference with AP, of course, is that AP provides its stories to all its members with appropriate credit (most of the time, anyway). If the Courant did aggregation the correct way, the Bristol Press and other free news websites ought to throw a party to celebrate having links to their stories on courant.com.  The JI and RepAm, since they’re paid sites, are different stories and actually raise pretty interesting legal questions.

My pal’s other point concerned how the Courant staff is being made to look bad because of the JI coverage and SBJ censure. He observes that the employees from various public agencies — DCF, for instance — have the same complaint when the Courant runs their department through the grinder.

I also would direct readers to the comment submitted today by Kevin Smith, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, who says he did not send his organization’s censure notice to every member of the Courant staff. (See the right rail.)

Finally, Duby McDowell at The Laurel shares this notice she got:

A former HBJ reporter who was very surprised to see the Courant cite HBJ in its reporting of the St. Francis investigation.  He is a fan of both our sites and he asked me to send his comments along to you. I think this is a concrete example of the Courant realizing it has to be VERY careful now:

 When I worked for the HBJ, I recall numerous instances in which our paper would break a story, and then the Courant would follow up with its own version a day or two later with its own reporting without giving any credit to the HBJ for breaking the story. The Courant never copied and pasted directly from our stories, but given the HBJ’s significantly smaller circulation, the Courant’s editors obviously knew they could get away with reporting and writing the same story as if they had broken it. Of course, if the Courant did its own reporting, they don’t have to credit the HBJ, and only a small group would know the HBJ had it first. If you ask me, the attribution to the HBJ in the St. Francis story is a signal that the Courant realizes it now needs to cover its you-know-what so it’s not susceptible to further allegations that tarnish its damaged reputation even further.