Newspapers - stop nicking our work

It's a rum do and no mistake.

As Coronation Street fans we work hard here on the Coronation Street Blog to bring fans not just the breaking news and spoilers from the press and ITV. We work hard to bring the more fun, fan stuff for which this blog is best known - and for which it was created ten years ago.

We create our own content here, we don't just recycle any old story going around th'internet. We write about what we love and about what makes us choke on our milk stout.

This blog is a labour of love, a love-letter to Corrie, if you will.

When we report news from the press, we credit our sources - always.

However, in the ten years that the blog has been online, our work has been taken many times by tabloids and used without our permission.  It's not something I get used to, seeing original work that we created here, taken and repeated elsewhere with no credit to us.  All we want is the link, the credit, the nod. If you want to use our stuff, talk to me, please. 

In the last few days, three different online tabloid newspapers have taken two stories we created and passed our work off as their own.

Last week, The Sun took a blog post I created about Joseph Brown and his soap star sisters. Digital Spy also took the story but were good enough to credit and link to us for which I publicly thanked them on Twitter.

Today, The Daily Mirror ran a story about all of the ex-Corrie actors who are starring in panto this year. It was taken from our list which I created a while back.  It's a list I create every year at this time.  When tackled, the Mirror apologised to me by email, explaining that it was a freelance writer who had sold them that story. They have now updated the story with a link and credit to us. 

The Daily Star was next to take that pantomime story too, this time labelling it as their exclusive! I've written to them to complain and have had a reply via Twitter but as yet, no update to their article online.

As the tabloids become even more desperate for online content to get the clicks to feed their ads, I fear our work will be taken more often. And it's not just our work that gets nicked. My friend Christine in Canada who ran the Coronation Street fun pages (no longer online) had her work stolen too by a tabloid. And my guess is that every other successful, well-written, well-researched and hard working fan site gets hacked by the tabloids too.

So here's the thing.. 
Tabloid editors and freelance writers.
All original work on Coronation Street Blog is covered by a Creative Commons License
Play fair and give us a credit and a link.

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All original work on Coronation Street Blog is covered by a Creative Commons License