life: Journalistic Integrity? I think I was just scooped.
Okay, so this is interesting.
Last November, I had to write a research paper on the local area here. I had to write about something, a physical location, within Butte County, California, that was over fifty years old and of significance to the community.
Me, being me, I chose to write about Chico as a filming location, because there's areas around here that have been popping up in film since 1909 thereabouts? It's a nice area to film in, a perfectly lovely area to live in if you take the people out of it, and it looks like it could be a lot of other places in the world. I was lucky enough to get an "interview" with Jim Beaver for this paper, even, given that he's a film historian and an actor. I ended up with more material than I could fit in to a seven page paper and it made me sad. But the paper was "the best paper in class," and this from a professor who had a nasty reputation as being impossible to write papers for. (She'd been teaching forever and she knows her shit. I took two classes from her my first semester and am glad to have gotten to. I thought she kicked all ass.) It also managed to teach her something that she hadn't previously known about Chico and it earned her points in a trivia game she played at some social shindig a few days before the last day of school. I got an A in that class and an A on that paper.
Anyhow. This was a research paper. I had to do actual footwork and go to places, get old newspaper articles, talk to people, find out my own facts. I did all that. I talked to the chamber of commerce, the local historical sites, and the local museum. I talked to a local photographer to ask permission to use a photo he had taken. I also talked to a local freelance journalist who used to do tours that showed the areas that had been used for filming. She doesn't do that anymore, and had very little info to offer up, but she was gracious and asked if she could see the paper once it was finished. So did the photographer.
So in January, after I'd gotten the grade back, I sent it to the freelancer and the photographer with my thanks for their help. They wrote back with compliments on the paper. The freelancer wanted to be fb friends, but I use facebook for family communications and don't friend ppl I don't know. That was the last I heard about it for awhile.
Then along comes Oscar weekend. You know, the Oscars, where they honor movies. And suddenly, after having not said a peep about movies filmed in Chico for the past ten years or so since the buzz died off from the last big thing filmed here, the local news ran with a segment on Chico's movie history. They featured Gone with the Wind quite prominently at that time - which I had mentioned in my paper as a source of local myth and rumor, but had not gotten to find much hard core evidence about - and just did a quick little blurb of some of the other movies I had mentioned in my paper. No big deal, it's public access information I had gotten my hands on from the Chamber of Commerce. They just happened to mention the same movies I had instead of all thirty-odd. I kinda quirked my brow at it but it was a quick filler segment and I moved on with my life.
Now tonight... The local news airs PART ONE of a two part segment exploring Chico's movie history. They're approaching it from a similar angle as I did in my paper, looking at the personal impact that is left on the generations of the community that is used in the movies. They're talking about more movies than I did, branching out in to other counties nearby, and talking to people I hadn't. It's a full 6 minute article with rare movie clips it apparently took them three months to get their hands on. I couldn't find those movies when I went looking for them because local video stores don't carry them, they were never set to DVD, etc. So it is, in that respect, their article. They did work it. Everything except for the personal, one-on-one impact angle of the story. That part...
I'm kind of suspicious on the origins of this story. I think I might have started something. It's a "small town", sure, people talk to people who talk to people and word gets around, whatever. But I think they might have actually seen my paper and ran with it as an idea for a story. And I'm not sure what to think about that.
Last November, I had to write a research paper on the local area here. I had to write about something, a physical location, within Butte County, California, that was over fifty years old and of significance to the community.
Me, being me, I chose to write about Chico as a filming location, because there's areas around here that have been popping up in film since 1909 thereabouts? It's a nice area to film in, a perfectly lovely area to live in if you take the people out of it, and it looks like it could be a lot of other places in the world. I was lucky enough to get an "interview" with Jim Beaver for this paper, even, given that he's a film historian and an actor. I ended up with more material than I could fit in to a seven page paper and it made me sad. But the paper was "the best paper in class," and this from a professor who had a nasty reputation as being impossible to write papers for. (She'd been teaching forever and she knows her shit. I took two classes from her my first semester and am glad to have gotten to. I thought she kicked all ass.) It also managed to teach her something that she hadn't previously known about Chico and it earned her points in a trivia game she played at some social shindig a few days before the last day of school. I got an A in that class and an A on that paper.
Anyhow. This was a research paper. I had to do actual footwork and go to places, get old newspaper articles, talk to people, find out my own facts. I did all that. I talked to the chamber of commerce, the local historical sites, and the local museum. I talked to a local photographer to ask permission to use a photo he had taken. I also talked to a local freelance journalist who used to do tours that showed the areas that had been used for filming. She doesn't do that anymore, and had very little info to offer up, but she was gracious and asked if she could see the paper once it was finished. So did the photographer.
So in January, after I'd gotten the grade back, I sent it to the freelancer and the photographer with my thanks for their help. They wrote back with compliments on the paper. The freelancer wanted to be fb friends, but I use facebook for family communications and don't friend ppl I don't know. That was the last I heard about it for awhile.
Then along comes Oscar weekend. You know, the Oscars, where they honor movies. And suddenly, after having not said a peep about movies filmed in Chico for the past ten years or so since the buzz died off from the last big thing filmed here, the local news ran with a segment on Chico's movie history. They featured Gone with the Wind quite prominently at that time - which I had mentioned in my paper as a source of local myth and rumor, but had not gotten to find much hard core evidence about - and just did a quick little blurb of some of the other movies I had mentioned in my paper. No big deal, it's public access information I had gotten my hands on from the Chamber of Commerce. They just happened to mention the same movies I had instead of all thirty-odd. I kinda quirked my brow at it but it was a quick filler segment and I moved on with my life.
Now tonight... The local news airs PART ONE of a two part segment exploring Chico's movie history. They're approaching it from a similar angle as I did in my paper, looking at the personal impact that is left on the generations of the community that is used in the movies. They're talking about more movies than I did, branching out in to other counties nearby, and talking to people I hadn't. It's a full 6 minute article with rare movie clips it apparently took them three months to get their hands on. I couldn't find those movies when I went looking for them because local video stores don't carry them, they were never set to DVD, etc. So it is, in that respect, their article. They did work it. Everything except for the personal, one-on-one impact angle of the story. That part...
I'm kind of suspicious on the origins of this story. I think I might have started something. It's a "small town", sure, people talk to people who talk to people and word gets around, whatever. But I think they might have actually seen my paper and ran with it as an idea for a story. And I'm not sure what to think about that.