In his first person commentary, "The Death of Journalism (Gawker Edition)," Washington Post journalist Ian Shapira's righteous indignation is only matched by the degree to which he misses the point.
Shapira, whose indignation about a Gawker blog post about a recent story Shapira wrote came at a slow boil after an editor pushed the issue, seems more like a writer interested in his own story than a journalist genuinely concerned about the death of traditional journalism.
Which is a shame, since the death of traditional journalism continues to be a story worth chewing -- whether it turns out to be true or not.
Shapira is right when he explains that writing a 1,500 word story takes time, energy and (sometimes) some intellectual capital. And he's right to be perturbed that Gawker didn't provide any attribution until the blogged story's footer.
Where Shapira is wrong is to link a Gawker cut-and-paste to the death of journalism.
As Shapira acknowledges deeper into his commentary on the affair, whether the Gawker piece was a net gain or a net loss -- for the Washington Post or for Gawker -- is hard enough to determine.
Everyone got a little traffic, but none of it was phenomenal. In fact, I'd bet that the Gawker story and Shapira's original story probably received more play as a result of his follow-up commentary, which shows what happens when you play the Internet's own game.
