The Biddeford Gazette mistakenly blasted its competitor Monday for allegedly claiming exclusivity in republishing a story from Maine’s largest paper.
Randy Seaver, the Gazette’s editor, accused the Biddeford Buzz of stealing, and then claiming originality of, a throwaway column that first ran in the Portland Press Herald.
Seaver, meanwhile, had taken the Buzz piece without confirming its ownership and reposted it on his website, bogusly labeling it as a Buzz “exclusive.”
Yet he’s accusing Buzz founder Joshua Wolfe of a copyright violation?
Seaver then apologized to his readers for mistakenly assuming that Wolfe claimed the piece was exclusively his, which was actually not true whether Seaver believed it or not.
Wolfe, in fact, never said that the column, written by two former mayors, was an “exclusive.” He did nothing of the sort.
Seaver posted an “open letter” to his readers taking ownership of what he called his own “silly mistake.”
“In the end, I violated several fundamental principles of professional journalism by sharing the Biddeford Buzz story on the Gazette’s own social media platforms,” Seaver wrote.
“Silly mistake” when he does it, copyright infringement when someone else does.
OK, got it.
Wolfe replied to Seaver’s mea culpa, saying, “Please do not assume anything is exclusive unless we say it is.”
The two digital news sites, Biddeford Buzz and Biddeford Gazette, recently picked up coverage of the city in the wake of two legacy dailies, the Journal Tribune and Press Herald, closing up their York County shops.
The mill city of Bideford has a rich history of friendly-but-very-competitive newspaper wars but never once before this did any one of them stoop to calling out another one for plagiarizing.
To wit, media outlets pick and grab from their competitors all the time; everybody does it.
Suddenly it’s called plagiarism with no basis.
Seaver has been talking for weeks now about how the Biddeford Gazette has evolved into a serious news organization, with its own “non-profit” corporate filing, its own bank account, its own chief financial officer, its own board of directors, its own board of this, its own board of that, a stable of contributing writers, a so-called copy editor – the list of self-aggrandizing claims goes on and on.
But with all those layers of redundancy Seaver this week said he’s made, now, four recent mistakes. Maybe it was three, maybe it was five. Who’s counting.
Seaver worked and/or volunteered for a few small weekly rags before he started his own operation, so he has some experience in the business.
During one of those stints while working allegedly as a reporter he began openly lobbying for the firing of the Biddeford city manager, who lost his job.
And now he’s questioning Wolfe’s morals?
Wolfe started his news outlet on a wing and a prayer, having never had a stitch of experience in the world of journalism.
He started reporting simply after meeting some journalists who were covering an issue in which he was involved in Biddeford and was intrigued by their profession.
The Biddeford Buzz has quickly become, arguably, the most dogged, successful, widely-followed, credible news organization in southern Maine.
The fact that Wolfe is aggregating news items from other outlets as part of his coverage is nothing different from what Seaver is doing.
If the Portland Press Herald editors want to join Seaver in accusing Wolfe of plagiarizing, they’re also entitled to a fool’s errand.
They’ve got far bigger problems than whether Joshua Wolfe is reprinting one of their columns.
Such as keeping up with his scoops.
