"BlackBerry Manners" Deja Vu

I had a weird feeling as I bounced across the headlines for tomorrow’s (Wednesday) Globe and Mail. Didn’t I just read that same article in The New York Times? Although the headlines are slightly different, the rest of the Globe’s piece by Wallace Immen has a familiar refrain.

Here’s the NYT headline from Sunday’s June 21st edition:

Mind Your BlackBerry or Mind Your Manners

Here’s the Globe headline from Wedesday’s June 24th edition:

Mind your BlackBerry manners, or risk your career

Here’s a snapshot from the NYT piece:

But a spirited debate about etiquette has broken out. Traditionalists say the use of BlackBerrys and iPhones in meetings is as gauche as ordering out for pizza. Techno-evangelists insist that to ignore real-time text messages in a need-it-yesterday world is to invite peril.

In Hollywood, both the Creative Artists Agency and United Talent Agency ban BlackBerry use at meetings. Tom Golisano, a billionaire and power broker in New York State politics, said last week that he pushed to remove Malcolm A. Smith as the State Senate majority leader after the senator met with him on budget matters in April and spent the time reading e-mail on his BlackBerry.

Here’s the Globe’s take on BlackBerry manners:

Such distraction can even cost a job.

This month, New York State Senator Malcolm Smith was unseated from his rank as majority leader in a political coup organized by a billionaire power broker who was enraged when Mr. Smith paid more attention in a meeting to his BlackBerry than to him.

“I thought that was very rude,” said Rochester, N.Y., businessman Tom Golisano. Mr. Golisano told reporters he’d travelled 400 kilometres to get an audience with Mr. Smith “and the guy comes into his office and starts playing with his BlackBerry… I was miffed.”

Although the NYT piece referred to the Golisano event, the Globe’s writer appeared to rely heavily on the actual reportage of The New York Daily News:

Upstate billionaire Thomas Golisano said he began plotting to overthrow Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith after the Democrat spent a whole meeting in late April reading e-mails.

“Of course I was upset, I thought that was very rude,” he said of the meeting in Smith’s office.

“When I travel 250 miles to make a case on how to save the state a lot of money … and the guy comes into his office and starts playing with his BlackBerry, I was miffed.”

The Globe did not refer to the source of the original reporting, as is customary in the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. At least they changed the miles to kilometers…. Other than that, it’s a direct “lift” as they say.

I can understand how these things happen. You come to work on Monday morning and you’re inspired by something written in the greatest newspaper in the world. Why not do your own piece?

I think the answer to that question is pretty clear now. I have no problem if journos want to advance a story or concept. But don’t copy the essence of the headline and key quotes in the article, particularly when you weren’t there yourself to record the original event. And doing a Google search to grab the NY Daily News paragraphs off the internet just doesn’t count as independent research.

If all I’m getting is what has already been reported in the NYT or WSJ, that’s all I have to read. The DTM, under its new editor, can do better.

MRM