EFF Takes Aim at Bogus Online Gaming Patent [LWN.net]

EFF Takes Aim at Bogus Online Gaming Patent

Posted Feb 3, 2008 0:45 UTC (Sun) by MattPerry (subscriber, #46341)
In reply to: EFF Takes Aim at Bogus Online Gaming Patent by sepreece
Parent article: EFF Takes Aim at Bogus Online Gaming Patent

> Umm - it's fine for the EFF to call the patent bogus, but as journalists,
> LWN has a responsibility to be even-handed in its headlines and stories.

LWN is even-handed in the headlines and stories that they create.  Many articles, such as this
one, are from the general news and are passed through unaltered, headline and all, because LWN
is not the author.  The summary is always a bit of text taken unaltered from the article text
as well.  This is the way LWN has always operated.  I prefer this method rather than the
Slashdot method where someone butchers the original title and summary with their own opinion.

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EFF Takes Aim at Bogus Online Gaming Patent

Posted Feb 4, 2008 0:17 UTC (Mon) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link]

I hadn't noticed that this was a pass-through item. Some LWN announcements are apparently
passed through, headline and all, others are cited with an LWN introduction and headline
(Which here presumably would have been something like The EFF *announced* that...", where the
"announced would have been a link). The only way I noticed to distinguish them is a
"Comments:" at the bottom of ledes for cited items, versus "Full story:" on pass-throughs.

I respect LWN's work, especially Jon's, a lot. On this particular aspect I think LWN would be
improved if there were some clear indication in the story and headline when an item is a
pass-through - like putting the source's name in the headline, e.g., "EFF: EFF takes aim
at...", or even just putting quotation marks around the headline to indicate it's a quoted
title. The current method seems to create an opportunity for people issuing news releases to
game LWN into appearing to take an opinion in their headlines.