Look How Long it Took to Plagiarize A News Item...

Yes, the BIG story is that some reporter bought an assault rifle in under 7 minutes. Another aspect of this is... That it took even less time for every Buzz Feed, Gawker, Decider, Huffy-Puff, Stealy-Wheel website to publish the story, too. And how many pay ANY royalty?

At the "aggregate" sites like Yahoo or "Google" (is your friend), they'll give you your choice of where to read the story. Don't most of these websites simply steal the facts (which can't be copyrighted) and at best, give a source attribution. Gosh, how nice. Try buying a cup of coffee with source attribution. There are fewer and fewer news organizations and photo agencies. There are fewer responsible journalists to make sure a story is factual. On the positive side? There are plenty of websites and blogs making chump change, with the owners proudly claiming to be "writers" or "editors." Right, and keep your day jobs as garbage collectors and sewer workers. Making a living in writing, reporting and photography never was easy, and it's much worse now. But I could be wrong. I can't afford a fact-checker or proofreader.