Our editor, Donna Thornton, was attending an Albertville City Council meeting recently when an obvious fan of The Leader came in, sat down and proudly announced, “There’s a new paper in town!”
After introducing herself to Donna, who was sitting nearby, she told her she has enjoyed reading The Leader since its inception and considered it “the most honest newspaper” she’d read in a very long time.
Wow, I can’t tell you how securing that kind of credibility with our readers right out of the gate means to everyone here at The Leader. We’re an open book, folks, and I think most of you realize and appreciate that. More importantly you know we’re not going to do something we’re not supposed to do, and I can’t tell you how much we realize and appreciate that as well.
In the spirit of maintaining that honesty and credibility with you, I want to make you aware of an issue our competitor raised with us in just the last week.
The managing editor of the competition emailed us and very kindly pointed out we had a couple of game dates incorrect in the Sports section of the Wednesday, Aug. 20, edition of the paper. Just in case we got any calls about it, you know, because readers can be so cruel at times.
Wasn’t that thoughtful?
While she led with the date issue, the real purpose of the email was to accuse us of knowingly publishing a picture she said a member of their staff took without giving them/him proper credit for the shot. The photo in question was from an Asbury football jamboree and appeared in the same Aug. 20 Sports section the game date mistakes occurred.
She implied we lifted the picture from their social media page and didn’t attribute it to them because, well, they are the competition and we didn’t want people to know where we got it. Just wanted to give us a heads up they knew what was going on, you know, so it doesn’t happen again. Just give them proper credit, like other papers in the area do when they use their material and vice versa.
Now, her email wasn’t as straightforward as my summary above. There was a lot of innuendo in it instead and just enough syrup to try and cover up the snarkiness. I’ve just bottom-lined it for you.
In my reply, I made it quite clear to her we did not attribute the picture to the competition because we did not get it from them. We got it from the Asbury principal’s Facebook page, and he has given us access to his page and permission to use anything on his page we’d like or need.
And he’s not the only one. We’ve got similar arrangements with individuals and organizations throughout the community.
This is common in today’s world of journalism. Whether it be schools, law enforcement, government, business and the like, pulling information or art from their social media pages or websites is just how it works today instead of the press releases of bygone days. Not saying it’s better or worse. Just saying that’s how it is.
What’s not common is taking material off your competition’s social media or website and trying to pass it off as your own. That’s incredibly unethical and that’s what we were being accused of by our competition. I can tell you unequivocally that did not happen nor would it happen. Ever.
Just like it’s not common and incredibly unethical to take our intellectual property without permission and turn it into a fake Facebook page and profile, which I can unequivocally tell you our competition has done. Not that I would expect them to do anything about it even after being called on it. Ever.
We neither want nor need material from our competition, and I made that pretty clear to them in a way they may not have appreciated. However, I also wanted to share that with you, our gentle readers, so, you know your faith and trust in us continues to be well-founded.
Nothing nefarious to see here, folks. Just thought you should know.
Patrick Graham is the proprietor of The Sand Mountain Leader and other newspapers in Alabama and Georgia. His email address is [email protected].
Asbury coach Matt Harris addresses his squad and Ider players after the teams’ scrimmage game Aug. 15. JOHN MANN PHOTO
