Burneko discusses plagiarism at SB Nation

Albert Burneko commented on a plagiarism issue at SB Nation, in which an "unpaid" provider to SB Nation copied text from somewhere else.


See if you can follow the logic, here, such as it is. This happened on one of the hundreds of websites on which SB Nation happily farms out the production of virtually all its editorial content to unpaid amateurs operating with little to no editorial oversight ... therefore it somehow is not “an indictment of the company [that of its own volition chose a business model whose bedrock is the monetizing of content produced mostly by unpaid amateurs].” This, my good buddies, is bad media criticism.

SB Nation, as an institution, mostly has been able to avoid the kind of criticism that competing blog farm Bleacher Report endured for years, while running a shop not meaningfully different in its reliance upon amateur writers cranking out volume blogs for little or no pay. The network sites, run by a site manager who receives a monthly “stipend” and populated by unpaid content-uploaders, are treated as fully consubstantial with the central site and parent company when it suits the latter’s purposes—the top current article on Mile High Report contains a sponsored StubHub widget and commerce links to the Denver Broncos’ team apparel shop—but can be essentially disavowed when something like this happens.

But this logic is precisely backward.




One commenter to Albert's post stated:



Albert is absolutely right: It was the direct consequence of an institutional culture and business model that prioritized cheap content at all costs.


link: http://deadspin.com/unpaid-sb-nation-writer-did-plagiarism-got-fired-1792629860