whitneymathews.com

Cubicle mate Eric alerted me to an article/post by the Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, Indiana on Thursday morning. It was a write up about the AMC Fork & Screen concept. Old news to me... until I saw my smiling face in the photo in the article.

The picture (the image in this post) was taken by my good friend Ramsey at the blogger tour of the Olathe Fork & Screen in October 2008. Unfortunately, the post did not credit Ramsey and didn't identify any people in the picture... especially moi.

I'm used to hundreds of photographers splashing my image across the covers of global publications (heh), but I didn't think it was fair for Ramsey's work to be used without credit. So I emailed the author and copied everyone in the photo on the email. My email to the author:

I'm writing to address your use of the AMC Cinema Suites photo published on the Journal Gazette website on July 22, 2009. URL: http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20090722/BLOGS19/907229966

In your article, you say "a friend of mine who lives and works in Kansas City, MO got the opportunity recently to sample AMC Entertainment’s new moviegoing concept called Cinema Suites." I attended the pre-opening tour for local bloggers, and that is a photo of (from top to bottom) Justin Gardner (AMC employee), Eric Melin (co-worker and founder of scene-stealers.com), me, and my friend Lizzie Linderer. I'm not sure if the photo implies that your friend is Ramsey Mohsen (the photographer of that image), Justin, Eric, Lizzie, or me... but there is no caption that identifies any of us, dates the photograph, or credits Ramsey's work.

In case you're wondering, I blogged about this with this exact photo back in October in multiple places. It's also on Ramsey's Flickr photo stream. Here are the URLs:

- My website: http://whitneym.tumblr.com/post/56987913/amc-did-something-smart-as-far-as-viral-marketing
- My company website: http://www.spiral16.com/blog/2008/10/now-this-is-what-i-mean-when-i-say-engage/
- Ramsey's website: http://ramseymohsen.com/2008/10/video-blog-whoa-pizza-beer-at-the-movies/
- Ramsey's Flickr photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ramseymohsen/2983473126/in/photostream/
- Eric's website: http://www.scene-stealers.com/blogs/amcs-fork-screen-rock-fist-up/

If you Google search on this topic, many of the above URLs appear in the first two pages, so there are plenty of opportunities to find the source of the image.

I would appreciate it if you edited the post to include a credit to Ramsey, as he works very hard to create original content and build his personal brand online. I've also copied those who are in the photograph on this email in case they have a problem with their image being used in your post.

Thanks,

Whitney Mathews

He responded right away and was very apologetic. He is also (hopefully) changing the article to credit Ramsey. Hooray!

This points to an online ethical issue that is very important to me. Bloggers have a bad repuptation for being incapable of fact checking and research. In my posts, I do everything I can to credit sources via link or text mention. If traditional news is going to die, it's our responsibility to do the newsgathering and form opinions based on reality... even if it's just spelling someone's name correctly (ONE T IN MATHEWS!) or covering the 5 Ws (who, what, when, where, why) in every post.

By doing this, you automatically become a legit information gatekeeper in the eyes of your sources. You move beyond the high school "he said, she said" b.s. and launch into, what I believe, is the next step in social technology evolution - every person with Internet access is their own news organization, advertising agency, and PR firm.