Angry in the Great White North

A lot of bloggers picked up the story by Elizabeth Thompson of the Montreal Gazette detailing excerpts of Jean Chretien's memoirs, to be released this week, via National Newswatch. National Newswatch linked to the Ottawa Citizen, which meant most of us bloggers linked to the Ottawa Citizen and not to the Montreal Gazette.

The Ottawa Citizen and the Montreal Gazette are both CanWest publications. The original story was in the Montreal Gazette, though, and an abridged version appear in the Ottawa Citizen. But what is unique here is that when the Thompson piece appeared on the Montreal Gazette website, it appeared before the story was published in any CanWest paper.

To understand how it happened, go to Elizabeth Thompson's blog:

Gazette readers picked up their papers today to find a front page story about former PM Jean Chretien's fascinating new memoirs in which the veteran political streetfighter takes off the gloves and pulls no punches - at least not when it comes to his successor Paul Martin.

What some may have wondered about, though, is why a story about a book that was supposed to be embargoed until Sunday at 6 p.m. ended up on the Gazette's website Saturday afternoon and was in the dead tree version of the Gazette on Sunday morning.

The answer is simple: by the time we put it up on the website and in the paper, the embargo was already toast as the result of the actions of a couple of bookstores.

When a couple of bookstores put the memoirs on the shelves a week early, the story prepared by Thompson based on an advance copy was no longer banned from publication. As it was, the agreement allowed for publication ahead of the memoirs being officially released if the embargo is broken. Those bookstores broke the embargo, and Thompson's story went to print.

How did they know the embargo was broken? Actually, that's a funny story, but I won't ruin it. Read it on Thompson's blog.

In any case, Thompson's story went to print, as I said. Well, not to print first. On the web first. Then sent to CanWest papers across the country. Why the web first? The story was ready, and very time sensitive, so it went out the fastest way possible.

But then CanWest then wondered why all the hits were going to the Ottawa Citizen instead of the Montreal Gazette.

That's where we come in. As I said, National Newswatch linked to the Ottawa Citizen. From there, the links spread through the blogosphere. We all grabbed the link National Newswatch posted.

Is it important to link to the original version of the story at the Montreal Gazette? Obviously these are versions of the same story, but the original was longer and more complete. But how do you tell if you are looking at the original story. They trick is to take a moment to study some of the extra information we usually gloss over. The key is in the fiddly bits at the bottom.

In the Ottawa Citizen, the story ends with "Montreal Gazette" just above the copyright line. The copyright is assigned to CanWest.

The Montreal Gazette version ends with Elizabeth Thompson's email address just above the copyright line. The copyright is assigned to the Montreal Gazette.

So it is definitely possible to figure out the original source story. If a different paper is named then the one you are reading, then the story came from there. As bloggers, we could probably improve the quality of our work by using these original versions instead of the abridged distributed copies.

But who is going to have the discipline to do this backtracking? I can promise to try, of course, but I might not always think to check.

Here is where CanWest can help too. As I pointed out, there is text attached to each story that can help someone who knows what clues to look for track back to the source story. But why go to that trouble? Is there a good reason not to link the Montreal Gazette story from the Ottawa Citizen story? Honestly, I can't think of one, but then maybe there is some legal thing I haven't thought of.

But if there is no reason not to link, then maybe CanWest can link all the reprinted versions back to the original source story, perhaps changing that "Montreal Gazette" into the anchor text for such a link. People who run sites like National Newswatch can make a point to link to the original story, even if they first spot the story in a reprint. Other sites might use the reprint as their source material (perhaps because they don't care to use the original, or maybe they like to link to local publications), but visitors to the site can follow the link to the reprint and then to the original if they are curious to read more about the story.

We should always encourage curiousity.