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Ethics of rewrites

Discussion in 'Copywriting' started by DallasBBQ, Apr 15, 2011.

  1. #1
    I am developing a site for a niche industry group. As part of my content strategy, I would like to post short recaps of recent events in this industry. I plan to review RSS feeds and post short recaps of news stories with links to the original article. Is this considered ethical since all my content will be based on published articles from major news sites? I plan to write original content that is short 150-200 recaps with full attribution. I am not doing this for SEO. This is purely a service for my users to quickly see what is happening in this industry. They can click on the links if they would like read the original article. Is this a common practice? I see a major sports site that is doing the exact same thing – www.realgm.com
     
    DallasBBQ, Apr 15, 2011 IP
  2. theAdviserMe

    theAdviserMe Active Member

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    #2
    I personally think it is fine and those sites whom you linked will actually thank you for it...
     
    theAdviserMe, Apr 17, 2011 IP
  3. premiumwriting

    premiumwriting Peon

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    #3
    As long as you're linking to the original source and giving credit there's absolutely nothing wrong with it from an ethical perspective.
     
    premiumwriting, Apr 17, 2011 IP
  4. peejaydee

    peejaydee Peon

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    #4
    I would say that provided you're writing your 'summary' as a news style paragraph, rather than sumarising the content of the original article and provided you are directing readers to the original page to get the details, then you'll probably be fine.
    Writing summaries is dubious ground. Some might argue that you're using the essence of the original idea for your own purposes. I would avoid summarising the original article. Try instead to focus on what the 'headline' of the article is and report on that making it very clear where the story originates.
     
    peejaydee, Apr 17, 2011 IP
  5. contentboss

    contentboss Peon

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    #5
    There are tools that can automatically 'paraphrase' articles. Search Google for more information on the word 'paraphrasing'
     
    contentboss, Apr 18, 2011 IP
  6. balivillaholidays

    balivillaholidays Peon

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    #6
    Rewrites are not that bad as long as you link as you fully quote the fragments from their contents. It also much better if you rewrite the story from your original words and sentences and just state a non-live link or nofollow link of your story source.
     
    balivillaholidays, Apr 18, 2011 IP
  7. thesickearth

    thesickearth Active Member

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    #7
    nobody can own a news event, so if its completely re-writed its all yours, no need to link anybody
     
    thesickearth, Apr 18, 2011 IP
  8. YMC

    YMC Well-Known Member

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    #8
    Rather than simply summarize, why not add something new? IMHO, virtually every news article leaves out background details or other interesting information. You could add your opinion or some piece of information the original writer assumed or left out. That way you are adding to the piece and creating something at least somewhat new. Add something that might be a conversation starter.

    It will require a bit of research on your part but done right, you can actually end up outranking the original source material. I had a site where I played with something similar and several of the articles ranked higher in the SERPs than the originals and several were included in Google News. Unfortunately, doing it right, took much longer than I had the time for and a server change eventually killed the site completely.
     
    YMC, Apr 19, 2011 IP