On being ripped off by the press

There’s nothing I like more than being read. Watching my stats tick up after I publish a post gives me a thrill – or sometimes a pang of dread- depending on how risque my post is. Sometimes the numbers soar as a post goes viral, re-posted as I sometimes am, by Mumsnet, or when an article I have written in the mainstream press gets linked to my blog. I ride the crest of those waves with the same excitement, I imagine (as I’ve never done it) as a surfer on the actual sea, rather than just the plain old internet.

Often, it is all that I write this for: the joy of being read, being an avid reader myself; of having my uninterrupted say, of putting things as precisely, and dogmatically, as I please. It clears an itch in my brain that won’t allow me to rest until I scratch it out on my keyboard. Occasionally, it leads to other opportunities: the odd freebie, an freelancing job here and there, although I live in hope that an editor somewhere will swoop upon my purple prose and give me a column somewhere. Some dream. A lot of my peers from journalism school have managed it; but then, I have two kids and a reasonably well paid job in advertising, so what an earth can I complain about?

Except, every so often, though, avid reader that I am, I spot phrases, particular words , sentiments or even whole articles that reverberate familiarly, as if I’ve read them somewhere before. Perhaps I have… perhaps, in fact, I’ve written them. Editors, it seems are looking at my blogs, and freelancers too – which is great, but instead of giving me the call, they sometimes just rip me off.

Yesterday I spotted a whole article in The Guardian that contained a suspicious lot of phrases I used in this post, about names women get called at work, which got widely read on Mumsnet Bloggers Network, after making the front page. I don’t mind, exactly. I’m flattered, sort of. I’m not even surprised – we’re all magpies these days, adopting new vocabulary, echoing things we heard down the back of the internet. But given I do this for the joy of being read, I wouldn’t mind those viewings figure coming to me, or, if I’m being honest, getting the pittance that most freelancers are happy to write for, and a byline too.

And I don’t want to flatter myself too much either. It *could* be a coincidence. But it’s not for the first time, given that it’s common enough in the industry. Most publications don’t have the resources to make up fresh stories, so low paid staffers scour the net and other publications, looking for new ways to spin the same old same articles. An article I wrote for my journalism masters finals, on the best time for women to have babies, already pregnant, aged 24, was assessed by journalists in the field. Some time later, I saw my article, re-written, almost to the letter, but with new case studies.  I forget the publication – it might have been the Mail, which it’s highly likely the external examiners would have had contacts with. All of us look for inspiration elsewhere. I’m as guilty of following up on a trend in the hope my post gets read more as anyone else. But given my own career in journalism never really had a chance to get going, and having sold out, or rather, been shoehorned into writing often stultifying ad copy, I just sometimes wish, every once in a while, to get a bit of credit that extends beyond a retweet, a like, or numbers on a graph that mean nothing to anybody but me.