After noticing an increasing trend of digital plagiarism in online publishing in Australia, Allure Media group publisher Alison Rice is crusading for media to put an end to it. Here, she tells us the why and how...
I remember interning at a now-closed magazine when I was in my first year of uni. My job for the week was to go through old issues of competitor magazines and tear out interesting stories, then file them under tabs like “career” and “health” in overflowing folders. It felt really wrong, so I became that upstart who vowed never to be a writer that needed to steal ideas. I’d be like, you know, a good writer with an opinion and original ideas! So I find it absolutely no coincidence that one of the titles I look after is called Byrdie and has a tagline that reads: Savvy beauty with a fresh perspective.
That’s not to say I don’t take inspiration from other publications. I like to admire. Screenshotting stuff I find clever and original. It’s good to have that creative benchmark. Anyone who knows me well knows I crush hard on Ira Glass, and one quote of his in particular I live for and by is all about closing the creative gap – our taste is s**t-hot, but the work never feels like it gets there. We continue to create to close the gap between our work and our exceptional taste.
Anyway, here’s where I’ve hit a bit of a wall with women’s publishing online in Australia. There’s admiration, and there’s plagiarism. Digital plagiarism. Yes, that’s right, I’m trying to police the internet! Will you help me?
I wanted to write this article to bring some awareness to the issue. I’ve spoken about it at length with a few close industry friends and colleagues – women doing really innovative, exciting things. But my main reason is a selfish one. I’m just sick of sending emails to other editors and publishers asking them to either credit our sites or take the story down (if curious, the latter usually happens). I get zero power trip kicks from it and sending those emails creates a level of tension I choose not to operate in. I want to be creating! Looking forward!
We’ve run into a couple of instances ourselves where our US partners have used an image we don’t have rights to in Australia. As soon as we’re made aware, we take it down and inform our global teams. With the volume of content sent live each day, 100 per cent accuracy is next to impossible. I get that. Also: global image licensing. Three words I can no longer say out loud without feeling tightness in my chest.
But that’s image rights. What I’m wanting to raise is the straight up copy and paste story efforts. Yes, it happens. Across all mediums I’m sure. And unfortunately, even though Taylor Swift believes karma is real (see what I did there? A nifty little link back to a competitor site!), the time is now.
So let’s problem solve 101 this thing and focus on some solutions. Say you’re cruising the information superhighway of a morning. You’ve got your boss on your back asking where your first story is. You go to POPSUGAR Australia (crucial step, never stop doing that). You see a story you like. Instead of writing it up using the same angle, headline, image and quotes – because we all know duplicate stories piss off our overlord Mr. Google – why not email the editor and ask if you can pick it up. So then it becomes an extract, cite POPSUGAR Australia and link to us to read the full story.
Link partnerships within a competitive set are a real thing.
Or maybe you’re scrolling Who What Wear Australia thinking damn, they always nail that French girl fashion thing. Instead of producing mirror-copies of our stories about severely stylish French women, why not email the editor and ask if they’d like to grab a coffee and chat about content sharing around that particular topic? Who knows, we could even be helping launch a new platform that will revolutionise the way websites share content.
Traffic exchange within a competitive set is a real thing.
When we launched POPSUGAR Australia six years ago, no one cared about the internet. It sucked. Now everyone cares and it’s so great. You only have to look to the size of digital ad budgets now in comparison to just two years ago. It’s here and it’s now. The best thing about it is there’s room for all of us online but what I know for sure is original, quality content will win in the end. So instead of banging on about being disruptive, let’s just focus on creating original content.
I realise I am powerless alone. I need the help of every editor, publisher, online writer, social media editor, graphic designer and web developer (oh yeah, we also had our site design stolen recently. No biggie you guys!) working in women’s lifestyle right now. Because unfortunately, even though digital is so young here, we already need regulation. Or parents.
At Allure Media, we’ve got these super-charged global partners who spew amazing. Yes it’s our role to grow our brands locally, but we’re also brand guardians. I’ve met the women and men who coin our cool terms. Who come up with the next-level social designs and the story formats you’ve never seen before. The ideas you see belong to them. They own that creative copyright.
So I’ll keep emailing for them.
And then there’s our teams here in Australia. Wonder women. They truly never stop. Every day we push. Push for something we haven’t seen before. We spend so much time making our work uniquely our own so we can offer our readers that fresh perspective. I see them ideate. I see the look on their faces when they know they’ve just served up something great. It’s very cool, and it’s ours. So I’ll keep emailing for them, too.
But! I refuse to let that be my fate. Or the solution. So I’m writing this instead, in the hope that enough people pick it up and make a decision to be the change. To be original.
This I know to be true: traffic grabs stink. Do it for long enough and your reader will get sick of the smell. She also reads a lot, so we all share some part of our audience. When she gets sick of reading the same story on all of her favourite sites, or seeing the same Snapchat stories or Instagram posts, she’ll just stop reading. Stop following. Stop engaging.
Carousel image: POPSUGAR Australia
