expertSEM

Think back, way back, to those dreaded research papers you had to write in high school (or, if you were a huge English nerd like me, those delightful papers you couldn’t wait to write throughout all of high school and college). If you were an upstanding student, you most likely took great pains to ensure your paper followed MLA or APA Style Manual rules. With the rise of online content though, especially blogs, that staunch adherence to proper formatting and citations became null and void.

If you frequently write blog posts or other online content, get ready for a reminder of those angst-ridden years—you may once again have to adhere to specific referential guidelines. According to a recent Associated Press article, “AP to Meet with Blogging Group to Form Guidelines” (hope I did that correctly!), bloggers may be required to follow standards for quoting or referencing AP articles.

The debate of who owns online content has been raging for years. For AP, the final straw came last week—they sent a legal notice to Drudge Retort, a small news community playing off the name of well-known Drudge Report, for improper use of their stores. Drudge Retort immediately complied with AP’s request for removal; however, AP has decided that guidelines must be created to ensure “proper” use of their content. AP plans to meet with the Media Blogger’s Association next Thursday to discuss these potential guidelines.

I’m a little unsure how I feel about this. I’m certainly not criticizing AP for trying to get credit where credit is due. Copyright laws and citation guidelines are necessary. I know the hard work that goes into writing any type of material, and I would be livid if someone stole my words without giving me credit. It’s not a narcissistic reaction. As a writer, your words are your livelihood—they pay the mortgage and feed your family. If someone steals them and claims originality, you could lose a project, a job and maybe even your credibility as a writer.

Yet, I am loath to get behind AP on this. Why do they get to set these rules? And what if they attempt to overpower age-old citation guidelines? AP cannot simply make up standards that only benefit themselves when other organizations are suffering from the same paraphrasing plight. AP has yet to reveal how strict the guidelines will be. Right now the blogosphere is abuzz with guesses as to the nature of their standards: Maybe they’ll allow bloggers to quote willy-nilly as long as the material is properly linked and referenced with the original AP author, title and date; Or maybe they will ban bloggers from quoting more than ten words per article? No one knows.

So, is it time to brush the dust off the old style guides and your Trapper Keeper to revisit the high-school years of strict style guide adherence? We’ll know more next Thursday. Until then, blog free or die.