Heroes and heels: Who freeloads on other reporters and who’s a mensch?

Come back periodically to see who credits Wine Industry Insight for breaking this story: Sullivan Vineyards Bankruptcy: Napa Valley’s Chapter 11 From Hell (and who freeloads)

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Clearly facts cannot be copyrighted. That’s why there are more re-worked articles on the web than original reporting.

 

Ethical reporters give credit to those whose hard work and original reporting alerted them to a story or gave them a springboard from which to launch new articles. We call those heroes by a well-deserved name: mensch.

 

Unethical reporters never give credit to those who have put in the hours to dig out and write original and, often very difficult stories. Those heels are the freeloaders of the media. They never credit those who break a story.

 

We’ve gotten used to unethical folk who freeload on our work. So, we thought we should start calling them out. And the heroes as well.

 

It did annoy the hell out of us when lazy freeloaders were all over the Robert Dahl/Emad Tawfilis story once it became a vintner/investor-murder/suicide. And no credit to our original reporting over nearly a year, that broke the story, reported the gathering storm, and reported the full series events to the end.

 

Suddenly that story had a million illegitimate freeloading fathers who, unlike most illegitimate dads, all wanted to claim the baby as their own.

 

We’ll keep an eye on the media and report here — by name — the heroes and heels. This article will be updated frequently with what we find.