Qualche mese fa avevo elencato le accuse fatte dai media tradizionali all’informazione online e spiegato come le stesse accuse valgano da tempo contro gli stessi media tradizionali che fanno la predica. Tra queste, la tesi per cui internet “ruberebbe” e approfitterebbe dei contenuti e delle news prodotti dai giornali, sfruttando il lavoro altrui: tesi contraddetta dal fatto che la gran parte dei contenuti che i quotidiani italiani pubblicano viene da altre fonti.
Ora il Nieman Journalism Lab ha fatto un’indagine esattamente su questo studiando la circolazione di una notizia sui giornali internazionali.

Here’s what I found:

— Out of 121 unique stories, 13 (11 percent) contained some amount of original reporting. I counted a story as containing original reporting if it included at least an original quote. From there, things get fuzzy. Several reports, especially the more technical ones, also brought in information from obscure blogs. In some sense they didn’t publish anything new, but I can’t help feeling that these outlets were doing something worthwhile even so. Meanwhile, many newsrooms diligently called up the Chinese schools to hear exactly the same denial, which may not be adding much value.
— Only seven stories (six percent) were primarily based on original reporting. These were produced by The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Tech News World, Bloomberg,Xinhua (China), and the Global Times (China).
— Of the 13 stories with original reporting, eight were produced by outlets that primarily publish on paper,  four were produced by wire services, and one was produced by a primarily online outlet. For this story, the news really does come from newspapers.
— 14 reports (12 percent) were produced by Chinese outlets, had a China dateline, or mentioned the assistance of staff in China. For a story about China, that seems awfully low to me. Perhaps this has to do withcutbacks of foreign correspondents?
— Nine reports (7 percent) mentioned no source at all. Five more were partially unsourced. Given the ease of hyperlinks, this frightens me.