What’s In a Copyright?
by May 24, 1998 12:00 am 58 views
Speaking of Maylon Rice, he scooped all competing media with news that Tyson Foods Inc. planned a generous endowment gift to the University of Arkansas Press. The region’s other newspapers followed his story with their own articles, but neither credited the Fayetteville paper with the scoop.
In a copyright story published April 21 — four days before Tyson made it official — Rice reported that the UA Press was to receive a “significant gift” of $1 million to $2 million from Tyson Foods and the Tyson Family Foundation.
In typical Times fashion, the story was displayed prominently across the front page in a six-column layout — difficult to miss, in other words.
The Morning News of Northwest Arkansas followed Rice’s initial story with a four-paragraph, Page 2 item that included a quote from Tyson spokesman Archie Schaffer confirming that the foundation was considering a gift to the Press.
In its April 22 article, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was more successful in getting confirmation that, indeed, a substantial gift would be forthcoming. However, the newspaper’s front-page story credited only an Associated Press dispatch, with no mention of the Fayetteville paper.
AP assures us it cited the Times in the third paragraph of its story, and such an attribution is customary for a copyright story.
Seems to us the Democrat-Gazette and the News snubbed a competitor who scored with a legitimate scoop. n