So now it’s been established that the Courant violated ethical standards by using its competitors’ stories without attribution. That’s pretty much a no brainer to figure out for most journalists who got through the second week of Journalism 101.

But what about its use of the competition with attribution?

There is a line in the SPJ press release that I found instructive:

Many media outlets aggregate information online, summarizing a story and then linking to the original.

Yes, they do. But let’s look at how The Courant had been doing it. (It apparently has stopped.)

This is a word-for-word comparison of a piece I picked up from the Courant’s website, pretty much a random. It’s apparently a rewrite.

From the Bristol Press

You will notice that the  original piece, on the left, dated Aug. 24, is 108 words long. The Courant’s online rewrite links back to the Bristol Press item, but is actually six words longer, not counting two instances of attribution.

This in no way could qualify as being what the SPJ referred to as “summarizing.” Linking back to the original piece could only confirm that the Courant used the information in the Bristol Press story in its entirety a day after the Press reported it. The Courant’s retooled prose adds no new or updated information.

It is doubly ironic that the Courant’s web version of the Bristol Press story is apparently copyrighted:

This is not the only instance of this that I could find, but illustrates the point. Perhaps the SPJ would like to also weigh in on this, as if any journalist with a grain of integrity would need for it to.