Good luck with that journalism standards thing….

Generally speaking, that’s something that any site — Blogtown or OurPDX — is perfectly capable of grasping and attempting to embody in their respective, if different, missions.

In reality, I probably should have griped about using them on the blog without paying me as well (electronic or ink, either version of the Merc is a commercial enterprise, and so they’ve been violating my license), but I’ve been trying to whittle down the number of things I stress myself over.

Pictures are not just pictures. Pictures tell stories just like words do, and in many cases pictues tell the story that words can’t. That is why news organizations use pictures in their stories. It draws attention to the story and creates interest.

Taking a good photo is a skill. You have to understand visual language. You have to be at the right place at the right time. You have to compose the shot in a way that communicates what you are trying to say. You have to understand lighting and what all the settings on your camera do. Dieselboi and Aaron are great photographers, one amateur and one professional. They know how to tell a story using pictures.

Let’s say that a publication used someone else’s words in a story, without attribution. We call that plagiarism and writers have been getting their undies in a bunch over it for centuries, and rightly so. The same is true if a photographer publishes someone else’s photo without attribution. It’s clearly theft.

So why is it different if a writer uses someone else’s image to illustrate their story without permission or attribution? There is clear benefit to the writer in using the image, or they wouldn’t bother. Not asking is both sloppy and lazy – and theft of intellectual property.

Copyright is one of the few tools a visual artist has to protect their work, professional or amateur. Photographers have every right to get pissy when someone appropriates their work. What Aaron is doing in his post is educating people about this issue and if he’s a little mad about it – it makes sense to me why he would be. I’m pissed when I don’t get credit for my work too.

This isn’t an issue of OurPDX vs the Portland Mercury. It’s about image usage rights.

Now that we’ve hashed over the first five words of my comment, do you care to address the rest?

I think the Merc has responded well in each situation, although they might want to evaluate their training procedures (and this blog post may well encourage them to do so).

PDXsays had one point I was interested in — that mainstream news outlets will often use the words “accused” or “alleged” instead of stating outright that an act has been committed. I looked back over the post to see whether these words should have been used, but IMO, it’s not necessary — this is a first-person account of things that actually happened, and that have been acknowledged by both parties.

But once you want to appeal to a larger audience/readership, you should play by the rules of common courtesy, once those have been identified – even if the rules haven’t yet been made clear or written down in stone; even if there aren’t policemen or enforcers out there.

And if you want to be part of a larger community – and we do – then you need to make sure people don’t feel like you’ve lifted their work without permission. That’s why we make sure that people sharing photos to the OurPDX photo pool know that we may highlight their photo here on our blog (with full credit, of course.)

Finally, Dieselboi’s point about compensation is worthy of further discussion. For example, Aaron’s licensed his photos to me/OurPDX, and I’ve signed an agreement that says we’ll renegotiate compensation should OurPDX turn into a revenue-generating operation. (As I’m fond of repeating ad nauseum, we are still firmly a negative cashflow operation, with all of the cash currently flowing out of my pockets…!)

But I don’t think sites that accept advertising/revenue can presume/assume the use of work that may be easily available with the click of a mouse, yet has the potential to generate revenue for the original creator.

Hell, Aaron may feel strongly about having his work sit alongside ads for Dante’s, for all I know. Or has issues with the editorial content of the Merc, so doesn’t want to help subsidize the operation. (These are both wild-ass examples on my part, FYI.) And that’s his right to say no, for whatever wild-ass reason he wants to.

But if you ask first? You don’t have to apologize later. Good basic rule of thumb to follow — again, in my opinion.

We could have, of course, during the two or three times I saw you in person in the last 72 hours — times where I had no clue about your opinions about what I’ve said before or who I’ve said them to. (How would I? I had no clue that you’d seen that email, for starters…!)

Or any of the other multiple times we’ve seen each other in the last couple of months, of course. If you have an issue with me, what I might have said before, or my perceived attempts to wrestle myself into some sort of leadership position, take it up with me directly in person, won’t you? Thanks. But it might make more sense for this particular conversation to leave things like Hearst, the American Revolution, red dresses, or librarians aside and stick to the issue at hand.

And — just to make it crystal clear to those sitting in the sidelines with their popcorn, pulling their lawnchairs closer to the fray — Aaron wrote a blog post on OurPDX. I didn’t goad him into it, nor did I rub my hands together in glee about launching a witch hunt and/or the Next Blog Drama to game our traffic. A lot of what PDXSays is pulling into her multiple comments are clearly resentments and/or mis-perceptions that she has with me that might have been cleared up had she chatted with me in person. (Or not, of course…)

But I understand it’s much more fun to drag them out here for all to see…!