Journalism Gripe

That's right, now that I can command+shift+4, I will be showing you all different angles of my PowerBook desktop.

Today's topic is a gripe. With writers. Or, non-writers, perhaps.

So, the other day, NYT ran a profile on Kristen Chenoweth. Just a simple follow-her-and-her-dog-around-town type thing. Today, Playbill.com runs a story using a TEENY TINY bit of information from the NYT story, and passes it off as its own. We already learned from the Times that Chenoweth and Nathan Lane are developing a sitcom about talk-show personalities like Regis and Kelly. We know that. So why does Playbill have to tell us that same information, packed inside a "story" which only includes other information (bios) we already know and pawn it off as news? This is not news, this is old information.

I don't mean to pick on Mr Pincus-Roth from Playbill. Sir, I'm sure it's not your fault. I mean to pick on news sources in general. I read something in the Times or other reputable source on, say, Tuesday morning. I've been known to pick up my local Queen City paper up to ten days later and find the same story -- either word for word or simply repackaged. Can't we figure out a way to write our own stories? Doesn't anyone see the point in twelve people not writing the same story for twelve different papers or magazines or news outlets? At least spruce it up.