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Francine McKenna says she is mad as Hell. McKenna has a blog called Re:The Auditors, A couple of weeks ago she was doing an analysis of key word searches and spotted a trend. In one day the following searches showed up.
deloitte is firing people auditors blog
deloitte laid off
deloitte lay off
deloitte lay offs
deloitte layoffs
deloitte layoffs san francisco
deloitte rif
deloitte severance package
deloitte starting salary low
With the chops of a seasoned reporter, McKenna knew she had a hot story. She wrote about it on August 25th, two weeks later, the main stream media caught up with the story but in their reports, they didn't attribute any of their information to McKenna's story.
Now... I am used to breaking stories early from abroad and then seeing them in mainstream US media much later. That happened with the EY non-US merger story, for example.But I am not going to get used to two reputable publications, who are very aware of this blog, are very aware of blogs, and are surely aware of my posts, so completely ignoring me.My story on Augut 25th, "Is Deloitte The Perfect Firm?" broke the news of the layoffs and was 100% accurate. My subsequent followup with Deborah Harrington of Deloitte was done August 28. That's almost two weeks ago! These layoffs started the week before Labor Day!In the meantime, my followup post, which included the statements that Compliance Week and the NYT Deal Blog reprinted was posted in this blog on August 29th. That post, "Update - Deloitte Statement on Layoffs " has received voluminous comments. If the New York Times and Compliance Week had read those comments they would see that many of the people who have been affected by Deloitte "layoffs" are very angry and have a story to tell.
Last July, Michelle Anderson wrote about the friction between bloggers and journalists in a piece called The Ups, Downs of Reaching Out To Bloggers.
In that piece Anderson quotes Howard Witt, the southwest bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune who says he has changed his writing approach. According to the article, Witt said in the past he used to make sure the stories he wrote gained exposure in the paper and Chicago Tirbune website.
"Now he's concentrating on writing his stories quickly and having tehm blasted all over the blogosphere."
However, Witt’s interest in blogs is not a reflection of how all journalists feel. While some journalists like Witt maintain an e-mail list of bloggers to whom they can send their work, other journalists think of bloggers as narcissists rambling in front of their computer screens.
Some journalists have a “superiority complex” about their craft and view themselves as the gatekeepers of reporting information and amplifying a story, according to Witt. Therefore, they often times miss out on story ideas available on blogs, and the opportunity to have their stories posted on multiple sites, guaranteeing a wider readership.
The first piece I wrote for the Chicago Tribune's business section was a story about professional book club moderators. A few weeks later a friend of mine said she heard my story on NPR. Sure enough a reporter had read my story, then interviewed the folks that I interviewed and created her own piece. Did I get any attribution for the original piece? Of course not.
Should I have? That's debatable. The NPR reporter did interview the people I had talked to but she also did original work. This was in the days before blogging and before hat tipping 
became part of protocol for acknowledging sources. At the time I was a bit steamed that I had done all the leg work and they just took my story and converted it without so much as a mention.
McKenna is not the only person unhappy this week with unattributed information. Peter Kim is less than pleased with Michael Gass at social media today. Gass has a headline that says "50 Companies Using Social Media Marketing."
Peter Kim took exception with the list. In the comment section, Kim said,
Michael - you seem to have stolen this list straight from my blog. It's pretty clear from the formatting. The information is public - care to explain why you didn't include any attribution in your post?
Kim wrote his list on September 3,2008 and he provides 73 credit links for every source he used to create the
