Hello copywriters... I am wondering the process to go about writing about an article that I find in the news. Say I find a news story in some random local town paper and think the story has appeal to my visitors. Am I allowed to rewrite that story in my own words citing information that they present. Do I have to link to the original story? I think it would be best to link just to keep up the good neighbor attitude, but I would hate for a news site to see a bunch of traffic coming from my site and go to my site to find that I was using their info... Anyways please shed some light on this fr me.
You can write about the same news, but you can't simply reword their article. A good strategy here is to summarize the news in your own words, and contribute your own commentary to it. If they're the source where you first saw the news, it's a good idea to cite them.
thanks for the reply jhmattern... So when I am using their facts (not their commentary about the situation) should I use quotes or just an "according to such and such news
Citing news articles was just brought up in another thread. You have to be very careful to make sure that you only quote a small portion of the original story (a paragraph or so), and you have to give credit to the original reporter, as well as the newspaper. Never just "rewrite" a story in your own words - it can come back to bite you later on. Instead, mention the story, refer back to it, and offer your readers your own commentary on the story.
ok thank you I will delve way into this topic on my own... its just not worth it to take the easy way out and not obey copywright
You can cite by using "according to..." or "In a report made by [name of reporter] for the [media outlet], it was stated that..."
ok now i have another question... what if I find information from someone elses article and the quote the AP... should I refer to the AP or secondary source. Also, am I allowed to quote AP news or do I have to pay to redistribute the whole article if I use a tidbit of their news. I was looking and AP articles are like 30-50 per article! And they have the copyright cant redistribute, "rewrite" etc thing. I just dont want to get shut down before I get started.
I think you just answered your own question. If AP clearly states the terms for using any portion of their material, and you choose to publish anyway, you'll be looking at legal consequences. As to the first portion of your question: if your secondary source clearly states that the material was derived from AP content, then you are required to go to the original source. Better to pay the $50 now, rather than $5K or more later on when their legal dept. gets involved.
That's what I thought. Couldn't you just do a summary in your own words and leave a link with something like "for the official story click here"?
Yes. A brief summary with a link is considered perfectly acceptable as long as no actual verbatim quote is used.
Exactly how many articles are you planning to get? There are several third party agencies that you can approach so that you can get all your desired news articles. For a price, yes, but pretty affordable. If you're interested to know more, please send me a PM. Now if you're only targeting an article or two, then I agree with CoolCopy. Better pay, lest that you face a legal complaint soon. Try to write an overview and then place an active link to the main, original article.
In many ways, what you are saying is what bloggers tend to do on a regular basis. If someone is writing a political blog, he/she will will likely get a lot of their source material from online news stories. However, they will summarise it and provide their own unique view to it thus making ot original with a different perspective on the news. Rewriting is not what you should do.
I believe 75% of the article has to be your original content. When I see something and I am inspired to write about it, I use my own spin. Funny thing is I find that it is completely different once I finish it and has no resemblance to the original article at all other than the subject.