I’d like to think I’m downright religious about sourcing stories here on HW, going so far as to name sources and provide links wherever possible — hell, I’m so religious about that sort of thing that I gladly cite competitors in the trade press when they beat HW to a story. It happens in the rough-and-tumble news business. But to see the WSJ and Bloomberg completely fail to cite our story from earlier this week in their own coverage of the negotiations with Fannie Mae over the pending sale of IndyMac just reeks of information theft, to me. There is supposed to at least be some level of understanding among journalists in terms of tipping the hat towards a colleague. Here’s our story from Dec. 30th: http://develop.housingwire.com/2008/12/30/fannie-mae-holding-indymac-deal-hostage-sources-say/ Here’s Bloomberg’s Dec 31st coverage, which doesn’t mention us. And here’s the WSJ’s Jan. 1 coverage, which also doesn’t mention us. I suppose it’s merely coincidence that both major news outlets managed to get on the scent of a story we broke a day or two after we broke it. I’m sure they managed to find the story of their own accord. Here’s the thing: smaller, niche media like ours has to fight to make sure we retain credibility nationally. And this is an example of how the larger media outlets tend to use blogs and smaller media channels to feed their own news, without caring so much as to source their own efforts. Given the pains we go to here at HW to source our work, it’s frustrating to see such flippant journalism elsewhere.

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