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How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic

nickoneill.com

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Re: How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic

#21

Post by rweba »

(1) I object to the use of the term "stole" - there is no indication that the Forbes blogger did anything unethical. She gave links and full attribution to the NYT article and therefore helped to promote it. YES, the quotes from it are more extensive and lengthy than you would normally see but on the other hand it IS a NINE page article so I am pretty sure the excerpts still falls under Fair Use.

(2) The article in question is a feature article in the NYT Sunday magazine which is where they put the long in-depth articles which took months to investigate. These are meant to be Pulitzer Prize level pieces that will get people talking and make a big splash in the news cycle. This explains both the length and the title. There is NO WAY the NYT Sunday Magazine is going to lead with a sensationalist headline like “How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did.“ That smacks of The National Enquirer or something. The title they actually used (“How Companies Learn Your Secrets“) is not THAT bad either - it got me to click on it when I saw it.

(3) Most importantly, I don't see how Facebook Likes can be the sole metric of an article's "success." This weeks NYT Sunday Magazine is just officially coming out today. This is a front page article. Lots of people are going to be reading,talking and emailing it all week. And when they do they are going to send the link to the source and NYT will get the credit.

(4) Lastly, - no evidence is given that the TITLE was the SOLE reason why the Forbes post went viral. It is an interesting topic and the Forbes blogger adequately summarized it, making the post very "shareable." The promotion and SEO strategies of Forbes may also have helped.

So in summary the Forbes blog and the NYT magazine are very different types of publications and it looks like they both succeeded in what they were trying to do.

Re: How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic

#22

Post by jyblue »

kmfrk wrote: post #15

Are Forbes writers paid per post/traffic like Gawker writers are? I can only imagine this is the incentive that lead to this kind of crap.

I'd be curious to know how much views are accounted for in writers' compensation too. I would hope the editors of more reputable resources like Forbes have more sense than that.

Re: How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic

#23

Post by quanticle »

danso wrote: post #18

Here's why the Forbes blog post worked: it was short and to the (most interesting) point. I'm sure Duhigg (the author of the NYT piece) would agree that most neuropsychology research largely shows that readers' attention spans are short and easily influenced by the first few grafs of a story. In fact, any HN user probably has seen the phenomenon where link-bait-titled stories get hugely upvoted despite the actual bod…

What the NYT should do next time is have one of its army of prominent site bloggers recap the interesting facets of the story.

That is exactly what The Economist does. Most of their writers also have blogs, and when the magazine publishes a feature piece, their bloggers add commentary and try to show how the feature is relevant to their beat. It's a great way of letting readers know that they might be interested in a story that they'd never hear of otherwise.

In this case, perhaps the New York Times' political reporters could go into how this sort of behavioral analysis could be used by political campaigns to market their candidates.

Re: How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic

#25

Post by benologist »

This can't be the NYTimes first brush with this business model, it powers every major blog these days since The AOL Way leaked and everyone outside of AOL realized they were doing it wrong.

Engadget have tags for "New York Times", "NewYorkTimes", "NYTimes", "NYT", "The New York Times" and "TheNewYorkTimes" for the articles they hijack.

Re: How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic

#26

Post by teyc »

rweba wrote: post #21

(1) I object to the use of the term "stole" - there is no indication that the Forbes blogger did anything unethical. She gave links and full attribution to the NYT article and therefore helped to promote it. YES, the quotes from it are more extensive and lengthy than you would normally see but on the other hand it IS a NINE page article so I am pretty sure the excerpts still falls under Fair Use. (2) The article in q…

(4) ... all the required elements for attracting attention are there:

  teen girl
  pregnant
  father
It is true that the title would smack of a national enquirer post than NYT. However, NYT probably could have their own bloggers crafting juicer headlines and summaries that lead to the main article.

Re: How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic

#27

Post by potatolicious »

rweba wrote: post #21

(1) I object to the use of the term "stole" - there is no indication that the Forbes blogger did anything unethical. She gave links and full attribution to the NYT article and therefore helped to promote it. YES, the quotes from it are more extensive and lengthy than you would normally see but on the other hand it IS a NINE page article so I am pretty sure the excerpts still falls under Fair Use. (2) The article in q…

The Forbes "article" would have qualified as blogspam in every community I've been in. Giving proper attribution and linkback is a necessary but insufficient requirement.

The question is: how much did Forbes add to the original content to warrant a clickthrough? If nothing of value was added, then Forbes is just jacking clicks.

This is something many subreddits have had to deal with - the many, may spam blogs that simply aggregate links (even if properly attributed) without providing anything of additional value. In the subreddits I frequent we've started banning these, maybe the Internet as a whole should also.

It's amazing how prevalent it is these days to click on a link to read a tiny pithy excerpt of a fuller article. Click on that only to realize that it is also scraped content with no additional value or commentary. You have to get 5-7 clicks in just to find the original, interesting source that actually did any work.

Re: How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic

#28

Post by voytek »

kmfrk wrote: post #15

Are Forbes writers paid per post/traffic like Gawker writers are? I can only imagine this is the incentive that lead to this kind of crap.

According to Forbes' managing editor, their bloggers are paid a flat rate for a minimum number of posts and comments, but that yes, they are given incentives for monthly uniques and repeat traffic:

http://www.quora.com/Do-Forbes-bloggers-get-paid-or-are-they...

Re: How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic

#29

Post by subpixel »

jyblue wrote: post #22
kmfrk wrote: post #15

Are Forbes writers paid per post/traffic like Gawker writers are? I can only imagine this is the incentive that lead to this kind of crap.

I'd be curious to know how much views are accounted for in writers' compensation too. I would hope the editors of more reputable resources like Forbes have more sense than that.

I asked the Forbes blogger about the rules, if any, that govern repurposing content from other publications.

No reply: https://twitter.com/ryandeussing/status/170337298695720960

Re: How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic

#30

Post by Alex3917 »

potatolicious wrote: post #27
rweba wrote: post #21

(1) I object to the use of the term "stole" - there is no indication that the Forbes blogger did anything unethical. She gave links and full attribution to the NYT article and therefore helped to promote it. YES, the quotes from it are more extensive and lengthy than you would normally see but on the other hand it IS a NINE page article so I am pretty sure the excerpts still falls under Fair Use. (2) The article in q…

The Forbes "article" would have qualified as blogspam in every community I've been in. Giving proper attribution and linkback is a necessary but insufficient requirement. The question is: how much did Forbes add to the original content to warrant a clickthrough? If nothing of value was added, then Forbes is just jacking clicks. This is something many subreddits have had to deal with - the many, may spam blogs that si…

"The question is: how much did Forbes add to the original content to warrant a clickthrough? If nothing of value was added, then Forbes is just jacking clicks."

I think a better question is whether or not the Forbes article actually took clicks away from the NYT article. I doubt it actually did. If anything the NYT article probably got more clicks than it would have gotten otherwise. Yeah, it sucks that the person who did all the work isn't the one who got the credit, but it's hard to see how they're worse off for the Forbes piece.

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