It has been said, often, that good artists imitate and great artists steal. But in this particular case, who are we kidding: It’s the New York Post, which has never aspired to anything more than a one-stop shop for race baiting, celebrity gossip and jingoism.
So it was hardly a surprise this morning when, once again, the rag published a story without providing proper attribution to The Commercial Observer. In the latest example, the Post and its reporter published a story about Banco Santander marketing the building it owns at 45 East 53rd Street–a full two weeks after our own staff reporter Daniel Geiger broke similar news on our website and in our pages. To be fair, it’s doubtful that the Post scribe was responsible for the omission, but, rather, her editor or some executive higher up on the tabloid’s masthead.
Judging from a laundry list of frequent omissions, however, it definitely seems like more than just a mere mistake, and, possibly, something more like a bad habit:
- The New York Observer’s Matt Chaban last week broke news about the record-setting sale of author Truman Capote’s Brooklyn manse. A story in the New York Post the next day couldn’t be troubled with giving credit.
- In December, meanwhile, The New York Observer’s Elise Knutsen revealed the buyer of Sandy Weill’s $88 million penthouse. The Post failed to note the source of the news when the paper ran a wire story several weeks later.
- The phenomenon happened again that same month when The Observer’s Aaron Gell ran an excerpt of his ebook about Peter Braunstein, the Women’s Wear Daily writer turned criminal. The Post’s story made no mention of the Observer, although, to its credit, attributed the original story to Mr. Gell.
So why does this all matter? Because, quite frankly, we’d like more web traffic, and we genuinely believe that if we put in the effort and report the news, new readers will visit. But when a much larger, multinational corporation, such as News Corp., coasts on the shoulders of our reporters, attention is siphoned. Plus, it’s dishonest.
