The battlelines between journalists and bloggers have long been drawn with all the old, familiar criticisms.

Journalists pshaw bloggers lack of journalistic cred, while bloggers scoff at journalists meager understanding of the online medium and all that it offers.  This furious “why I’m important and you’re not” argument is indicative of any medium in transition.   Its a fight for professional survival.

But in my opinion, there’s a much more interesting conflict out there that isn’t getting nearly enough attention.

Newspapers have long gnashed their teeth regarding the frequent blogger action of using “fair use excerpts” from their articles in postings.  At their best, these excerpts give bloggers a jumping off point where they take a recent topic discussed in a paper and use it to steer the conversation in another direction, providing a different and often more critical point of view.  At their worst, “fair use” is interpreted too liberally, resulting in excerpts that are anything but, leaving the blog reader with little reason to click-over to the actual article.

This issue has long put thoughtful bloggers on the defensive, with each having to personally reconcile this reliance on a disapproving host.   My own solution includes cutting out most “fair use excerpts” from my posts and instead I provide general summaries in my own words.   Its not a perfect, guilt-free methodology.  I acknowledge that if I “over-summarize”, I pose the same risk as the liberal “excerpter” and veer into those dangerous waters where the click-over becomes unnecessary.

But it is on this point that I wish to turn the tables on newspapers and provide a long overdue counterpoint to the “fair use” rage. Read the rest of this entry »