Did this editor just steal my story?

Here's a good take on the subject of editors stealing ideas.

Did the editor run your piece word-for-word, minus the trimmed? Or did they re-write it? If it's word-for-word, you might be able to hit them for plagiarism. Otherwise, as much as it sucks, go with the blog post that Angie posted.

AlexP said:

They didn't plagiarize me. They paid me a pittance and ran my shortened story online with my byline.

What irks me is that the very same editor I dealt with is now working with the subject of the story to produce a full length print story...under HER byline.

All she had to do was ask me to slightly expand my own story and then run it in the mag. Instead, she shortened mine so she could do the longer print story herself.

Print journalism is what I do. She knew that because I sent my clips. I think she clearly just wanted her name on the story because it's a unique one that no one (besides me) has covered. It's also particularly well-suited to print because of the visuals involved.

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If print journalism is what you do then I'm sure you know you can't copyright ideas or prevent anyone from writing or publishing a story of the same subject.

I've also known plenty of writers through the years who thought someone had stolen their idea etcetera when it seemed like a coincidence to me, or something else that didn't likely have a thing to do with them or their work and no lines of propriety were really crossed imo.

But as you've described it, yes it does sound to me like she's not playing nice and I wouldn't like it, either. I'm no expert but as far as I know there's not likely much you can do about it though, except avoid working with her in the future.

AlexP said:

A few weeks ago, I submitted an article to a national magazine with a circulation of 200,000. The editor accepted it for online-only publication and gushed to me about what a great story it was.

There was no fluff in the story. It was tight, clean copy. Yet the editor trimmed it from 1,100 words down to 800, needlessly removing the biographical information on the story's subject.

Uhm, maybe they only had room for 800 words. What was the assignment, length-wise?

Two weeks after the story came out, the subject wrote to me and said the editor and her photographer recently came to meet with him because she wants to do a full print spread on him for her magazine.

I see now why the editor cut the biographical part from my article. She plans to use it in her own longer piece. In other words, instead of asking me to expand my story, she assigned it to herself.

I have no idea where you get this. An editor trimmed 300 words, which was biographical material, which somehow means the editor wants to just use that in a longer piece? I'm sorry, but what?

This was an enterprise story on an obscure character doing obscure things. It's not as if I was the third or fourth writer to cover him. I was the first. And, while this was my first time dealing with this particular magazine, I'm an experienced writer/journalist with plenty of published clips to demonstrate I'd do a quality job on a longer print story.

Have you ever seen this type of behavior? Should I call her out on it?

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What makes you think -

- That the editor didn't cut it because it needed cutting for whatever reason (space, she didn't think the bio stuff fit with the rest of the piece, she just thought it was too wordy, etc.)

- That the longer piece will be written by the editor.

- That the editor of a decent-sized magazine would use 300 words of your stuff instead of having a new piece.

- That the options were longer piece or 'stealing' yours. Why not they thought a second piece with a different focus would be a good fit for a subsequent issue?

I may be missing chunks of info, hence the questions, but as it's laid out here, I don't know where you're getting this or what the hell you'd call someone out on. Oh, also, what's in your contract?

Yes, from what you've said it certainly sounds like the editor took your lead and decided to expand it into a longer, more in-depth piece but didn't want to offer you the job. Because it's an idea rather than outright plagiarism I don't think there's much you can do about it. Maybe you could write a polite note to say you heard about the longer piece and would love the opportunity to write it.

I don't think there was theft here. What it sounds like to me is that you did a profile story that wound up being a product review or destination piece (or some other style) in the mag. That's the only reason I can see for removing the biographical information--to transform the article from being ABOUT that person to being ABOUT the thing the person did. Then, either through reader interest or higher up interest, a profile piece was authorized. That it wasn't assigned to you isn't a surprise. You're freelance. Staff writing always trumps. Don't presume the editor has a say in that process.

Your best course is to consider that you might be an idea generator for the mag. That's not a terrible position. Been there. Several editors used ideas I had as a jumping off point for other stuff. Until you see the end article, you won't know whether it goes far beyond what you envisioned for the article.

Mostly, I'd recommend you take in stride. Try not to feel brittle about the slight. Pitch another idea to them and see how they respond. It might be you get rewarded for the idea in subtle ways, like being bumped up from spec submissions to assigned articles. That also happened to me and resulted in a bunch more work over the long term.

AlexP said:

Thanks for the replies.

Yeah, there's nothing to be done. Still, it's shady ethics for an editor to write a story under her own byline instead of assigning it to the originating writer who already did the hard work of researching, sourcing, shooting, and so on.

I'll just send her a nice note saying, "Hi. [Mr. Subject] just wrote and said you may be interested in doing a full print spread on him. That's great. Let me know if you want me to get to work on it."

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No, it's not shady. You were assigned a piece; they ran and paid for the piece. Doing another piece on the same subject and not asking you to write it isn't shady or anything close. I wouldn't say it was shady even if you were on staff and you're not.

AlexP said:

I'll just send her a nice note saying, "Hi. [Mr. Subject] just wrote and said you may be interested in doing a full print spread on him. That's great. Let me know if you want me to get to work on it."

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I wouldn't do that. You're turning a possible positive (see Cathy's C's post) into a bad-taste-in-the-mouth.

It actually isn't shady ethics. It's how this sort of thing works. Make it work for you, by sending a nice note that says you're around if they need any help, you'll look out for the story, you did enjoy working with them and you hope to work with them again.

Being grumpy helps no-one get ahead, and characterising normal practice as shady ethics isn't going to do you any favours at all.

It is a pity. You've every right to feel disappointed. It's happened to me, and I know how it feels. But it has to be filed under Moving Forward.

No, the editor did not steal your work. The editor is simply assigning another writer to do a story on the same subject. You two hundred or so words of biography were not needed in the online article, and the print article will have far more info than you provided.

From your viewpoint there was no fluff in the story. From an editor's viewpoint, every paragraph in any article is one that may be cut at any time. You don't get to decide whether something is needlessly cut until you're the editor. In fact, you don't get to decide whether a story is printed in full, or cut down to a single sentences, until you're the editor. That's just how it is, and there's nothing shady about it. It's something you should know can happen, and will happen, and a risk you accept when you submit a piece.

If you want the spread in the print magazine, you probably would have got it had you submitted a piece the editor thought worthy of a spread. You didn't. The editor thought your piece was a good fit at the online version, and you accepted the money. Them's the breaks.

cornflake said:

No, it's not shady. You were assigned a piece; they ran and paid for the piece. Doing another piece on the same subject and not asking you to write it isn't shady or anything close. I wouldn't say it was shady even if you were on staff and you're not.

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It may seem harsh but Cornflakes hits the nail on the head. It has happened to me in the past that my idea was good but my writing style wasn't a good match for the magazine and they salvaged some of my work, paid me, and then sent their own people to cover a similar topic with the style and slant that meshed with their magazine. While I can not swear this is what happened to you, it is more common than you might think.

I've heard of this sort of big-footing and intellectual property theft happening all over, including at pubs like The New Yorker. This is idea theft and it's becoming accepted because writers are desperate to not get black-listed when freelance work is already scarce. It's despicable behavior and should be exposed on all fronts and on all occasions. Obviously, the less this swindling is publicized, the more it will become a best practice. The irritation I feel for you is immense.

It's not intellectual property theft. Facts are free to be used by anyone who has learned them, unless you're dealing with Trademarked manufacturing secrets or formulations.

You cannot steal an idea. An idea, once shared, is free to be interpreted by anyone who cares to do so.

A job was proposed. The job was done. The end. The magazine is free to cover the same material as many times as they choose from as many angles as they choose. The only thing they are not free to do is print contracted material without permission or compensation.

Lewis said:

I've heard of this sort of big-footing and intellectual property theft happening all over, including at pubs like The New Yorker. This is idea theft and it's becoming accepted because writers are desperate to not get black-listed when freelance work is already scarce. It's despicable behavior and should be exposed on all fronts and on all occasions. Obviously, the less this swindling is publicized, the more it will become a best practice. The irritation I feel for you is immense.

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What the... this was not theft, in any way, shape or form.

The OP was contracted to do a piece, did the piece, got paid.

The very idea that a publication must somehow assign any and all subsequent articles on any subject to the person who first brought up the subject is nigh ludicrous. How would that even work? 'Oh, Bob did a piece on Penelope Cruz last summer; I think we can do a new thing on her, focusing on Y. We have to have Bob do it though, because he did that original piece on her.' No.

Have you ever worked for or at a periodical of any stripe? Go sit in an editorial meeting, propose something, and have an editor assign it to someone sitting next to you, or say no, then think it's a good idea to put in the next issue over. That's how it works. It's not theft - it's an editor's job.

If the editor had used the OP's writing without paying him or under a different, specific byline, that'd be theft. This? Not theft, or shady, or anything else.

Getting steam-rolled and moving on is a cynical approach. While it may be more personally pragmatic to forget about it, in the macro, this practice is corrosive of journalistic ethics and intellectual property rights. This comes down to clarity of contracts. Editors need to include originators of story ideas as co-authors and writers should advocate for themselves thus. Alternatively, editor should acknowledged that, while the bio was not deemed a necessary component of the original story, "We are paying you for this story and also the ghost writing/germ/pitch of another story - originally, the bio - upon which another writer, whom we've assigned, will heavily expand. Do we have a deal?" The less writers demand clarity here, the more sickly and fawning writers will become on the whole, and the less recourse we all will bare. I understand the ethos of the other conversants here, but we all need to stiffen our spines a bit.

Lewis said:

Getting steam-rolled and moving on is a cynical approach. While it may be more personally pragmatic to forget about it, in the macro, this practice is corrosive of journalistic ethics and intellectual property rights. This comes down to clarity of contracts. Editors need to include originators of story ideas as co-authors and writers should advocate for themselves thus. Alternatively, editor should acknowledged that, while the bio was not deemed a necessary component of the original story, "We are paying you for this story and also the ghost writing/germ/pitch of another story - originally, the bio - upon which another writer, whom we've assigned, will heavily expand. Do we have a deal?" The less writers demand clarity here, the more sickly and fawning writers will become on the whole, and the less recourse we all will bare. I understand the ethos of the other conversants here, but we all need to stiffen our spines a bit.

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What?

I mean.. what?

Originators of ideas as coauthors? Don't you think that will, a. lead to bylines the size of Montana, and b. piss the fuck off of actual writers?

As to the second bolded - ghost writing is not the same as a pitch which is not the same as the germ of an idea. One of those things gets paid. The others do not, by their very nature, nor should they, lest the entire industry of collaborative writing of any goddamned thing grind to an everlasting halt.

In addition to everything else wrong here, the material we're talking about isn't even remotely unique (which wouldn't matter, but still...) it's biographical material. To assume that it was the genesis of the next piece, or that cutting it was somehow wrong, is so outside any journalistic practice I don't even know what to say.

I'd also like to know what journalistic ethics, in particular, you feel are violated here. Running another piece on a subject and not involving someone who wrote a first piece on the subject isn't it, because that's not in violation of any ethics, so...

There is NO intellectual property theft when you're dealing with researchable facts available to the general public.

When a magazine picks up a spec. article, it's because said article fits in with whatever the publication has already planned for a piece or series. For them to continue with that piece or series has nothing to do with the article they purchased and ran.

Cyia said:

It's not intellectual property theft. Facts are free to be used by anyone who has learned them, unless you're dealing with Trademarked manufacturing secrets or formulations.

You cannot steal an idea. An idea, once shared, is free to be interpreted by anyone who cares to do so.

A job was proposed. The job was done. The end. The magazine is free to cover the same material as many times as they choose from as many angles as they choose. The only thing they are not free to do is print contracted material without permission or compensation.

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No one, including the OP, said anything about intellectual property theft or trademark. Those things don't even apply to this situation.

This is more about professionalism and decorum. If a writer found out about a story subject, was the first to recognize the story's value, and wanted to put together a quirky or interesting biographical piece, then it's his discovery and it's just bad practice to elbow the writer out of the way.

But in this case it's even more underhanded because OP did write the entire story, and the editor chopped out the interesting stuff so she could write her own version of the story. Suppose that story then gets picked up by the AP, or NPR wants to interview the editor and ask her about how she developed the story and got the subject's trust. It's bush league.

So the people defending this practice, and treating it as some sort of legal issue, are missing the point. Journalism, especially local print journalism, is a small field. People know each other. This is probably not the first time the editor has done something like this. And at the very least, if it was a budget issue, she should have written OP an email and said something like, "Hey, I would've liked to assign the longform piece to you as well, but we'd already used our freelance budget for the month." But a real professional would've ran the story as-is, or had the writer follow up if she wanted a longer story with more detail. A real professional is generous with bylines and credit.

Plan said:

No one, including the OP, said anything about intellectual property theft or trademark.

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Actually, Lewis did.

Lewis said:

I've heard of this sort of big-footing and intellectual property theft happening all over,

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