Echo On the Internet

Washington Post's Peter Baker got robbed. He did the time and research for a well written article to all but have his by-line cut and a link at the bottom of the page that all but gives the Washington Post writer his due. The linking site, rawstory.com didn't deserve the 1200+ diggs. "This according to the Washington Post" and the link at the bottom doesn't absolve the fact that someone else's original research was being rebroadcasted.

I realize that a blog's purpose is to regurgitate the web for its own purpose, but at least give your constituency some level of opinion on the article instead of truncating it and posting. And grats on the Digg user for not having the brains to link the original article as it says in plain text on Digg's site when you submit an article (second bullet down).

I guess in the end what bugs me most is the lack of authorship on the web and seeing it get rewarded. You have people who blog under a company, people who do it like a pseudo job-hobby and seem to be doing well from it, and people who do it just to throw words out on the internet. Don't be the third category and just mince quotes into a new article. That is borderline disrespectful.

I'm all for voice on the internet, but if all you are is just a faint echo then what's the point?