Give credit where credit is due

Ask any reporter worth their salt and they'll tell you how great it feels to lead the pack in breaking a story.

There is nothing sweeter than waking up in the morning and seeing a story in the paper I or one of my colleagues wrote that no one else has.

Not the radio station.

Not the television.

Not no one.

It's sweeter still when those stories are picked up by the Associated Press and makes its rounds throughout the state and occasionally nationally.

The bitter part? When I see a story that I or one of my colleagues wrote — that no else had — but find it has been cribbed by the local TV station for use on its newscast.

This happens with a great deal of frequency, most recently yesterday; with my story about the city fire department hiring former Wood County Sheriff's Deputy Chris Piggott.

I attended Piggott's swearing in — I was the only member of the media there — and wrote the story for Tuesday's paper.

Tuesday morning I find a local TV reporter has cribbed my story and taken it as her own so the station could report it. The facts of the story, simple as it was, were taken from my story and used on the station's website and newscast without ANY attribution. That's wrong. And it's journalism 101. And the local TV station ought to know better.

The station kept their "story" up until another reporter was able to contact Fire Chief Eric Chichester and then do their own story, much later that day. The station also scrubbed its cribbed version from its website.

This is nothing new, but it is getting old.

In the age of digital media, where story's are posted on websites in minutes and hours, competition is fierce. But there are rules and we play by them. I wish everyone else did as well.

Cite your sources. Give credit where credit is due.