Son of Beast has rough history

I can't believe this journalist used the comments from another news article as quotes for his article. (Nathan 'Ride Warrior', Ashton, and Ethel90)

Link

That seems pretty pathetic to me.

Good call, Carrie.

Taer it down!

I can't believe a journalist using web fodder as his sources. What a joke. I honestly don't remember there being a death on SOB. I remember a broken neck and that was determined the man suffered from and knew about his spinal deterioration yet rode anyway.Last death I can remember was a anurism on Top Gun (Flight Deck) which the woman was unresponsive when ariving at the station.

“Why do whiny people have to screw up the better rides for those of us who want to ride them?”

I want to know who this guy is. Come on, I know you post here. :)

I was looking for me to be quoted after I realized that he was quoting message boards. One huge clue was when he added ", one person wrote".

I rate this news article a 2.3 out of 5, because it is interesting and informative, yet doesn't disclose the sources for the quotes, thus making it shoddy journalism at best.

Both links go to stories written by a Eric Schwartzberg. Having been in the newspaper business, it leads me to believe that each paper MAY be owned by the same umbrella company and stories are shared. This sort of thing happens often in weekly papers and things of the like. Our weekly used to share feature/travel stories with one of our sister papers a few counties away.

As for using quotes from messageboards, which that totally has to be with the names of those giving the quotes, it certainly isn't the best possible source, but for a quick story, I don't see it as being a huge deal. Hell, CNN does Twitter comments, Facebook quotes and things like it every day on TV.

If it's a source, you have to indicate where it is. You can't just rip off forum posts without attribution.

I like son of beast it is the nicesest coaster around and its a real good coaster

Jeff said:
If it's a source, you have to indicate where it is. You can't just rip off forum posts without attribution.

Yes, you are totally correct with giving credit for your sources. I didn't think that was the topic here, however. I was pointing out the fact that both the main article and the one she linked were written by the same person. I only mentioned the big companies quoting from messageboards and the like because it is generally looked upon as a lame source. Since organizations like CNN do it on a regular basis now, however, it looks like it is more commonplace.

I agree that there are flaws with the ethics in the quoting here, but if the articles are so bad, why even link them to this site?

For squirts and giggles, so you can comment on it.

And I keep commenting because I hope that one day my comments will appear on CNN. ;)

Jeff said:You can't just rip off forum posts without attribution.

Apparently you can! "Named credibe sources are so Walter Cronkhite..." ;)

I wouldn't mind one bit if the writer wrote something like, "We looked at one of the Webs more popular roller coaster enthusiast message boards and here's what some of the people posting on there had to say about this topic".

Siting your sources as "Coasterjunkie89" and "Diamondbacklover" just reeks of not knowing what you are doing.

For the record, I am a staff writer for a small, weekly newspaper. I never went to school for it, and I've been learning as I go. Even I know lazy journalism when I see it.