Blogging with the Washington Post

D.C. area bloggers were recently wined and dined and you might say liaised with in the auditorium of the Washington Post's headquarters in downtown D.C.  After the three-hour event, even more liaising went on at the "after party" at the Post Pub, though without this blogger.  Here's the invitation to this first-ever DC Blogger Summit.

Seems there was some fence-mending to do here between the Post and local bloggers, what with complaints of story-stealing, and lots of gossip about Post staffers having blogging added to their regular duties with no extra pay (there are now at least 30 staffer blogs on the Post's site).

Some highlights of the evening: 

• There was an excellent talk and Q&A by a libel and copyright lawyer, who told us we could lose our life savings, so we should get serious about the law.  I learned I should stop using photos from newspapers, even with attribution.  The Washingtonpost.com has a form to use to ask permission, see, and they expect people to use it.  Quoting from articles is fine, even lifting a graph from a story, but reproducing the whole story is a no-no. (Photos are regarded as complete works, so using them is like lifting a whole story.)  An audience member recommended Electronic Frontier Foundation as a great source of legal info for bloggers.

• The Post's upcoming Directory of Local Blogs was announced - there's a screenshot photo here. Great idea for newspapers, doncha think?  It's bound to drive a lot of traffic to their sites.  They're even working on ways to funnel click-based advertising income to the blogs they list. 

• Technorati was mentioned often as a cool service that sends traffic to blogs that link to Post stories.  Have you noticed this appearing on more and more newspaper sites?  After each story there's "Who's blogging about this story?" with a list of links.  (But I link to them all the time and usually don't get listed - is it something I said??)

More blogging news from the Post's Business Section:

• Good news - bloggers have been granted press credentials by the U.S. District Court for D.C. to cover the Scooter Libby trial.

• An update on how blogs generate income.

Comments

[Carol]

This is a timely topic. I posted earlier this morning on my blog about how I found out that some (a lot) of my blog content had been stolen by a "spam blog". I've gotten that blog shut down. One has to stay vigilent, both to keep your own blog legal and keep from getting ripped off.

[Daniel]

Thanks for the useful legal info. I always wondered about posting photos, so only post my own or photos that are very very old, such as books whose copyright ran out ages ago. The rest of the time I use links instead of re-posting the photos. I hope that is safe. I wondered about re-posting your manifesto, but even decided against that.

[Eliz.]

Yes, there is such a thing as copyright, and there is such a thing as copyright infringment.

Oddly, many bloggers seem to think that these long-acknowledged restrictions somehow do not apply to them. Thus, we often see complete articles on blogs.

As a longtime working journaliist, I have never understood this. I only post excerpts and links, and I advise my fellow bloggers to do the same.