Mine and TIME’s–Too Close for Comfort?Last Sunday, in a fit of paranoia, it seemed as if the Yoga Journal blog, Yoga Buzz, had scooped my post on the AskMen.com issue (whether meathead dudes should do yoga).
But a friendly note from Yoga Buzz online editor Erica Rodefer clarified that it was just a coincidence. Great blogging minds thinking alike etc etc. Okay, that’s cool.
However, it quickly became clear that I had sensed the future (putting my yogic skills to work!).
On Wednesday, April 15, Time Magazine’s article on Yoga and Psychotherpay cited many of my sources and clearly drew from the story structure of the piece I wrote for GAIA Magazine in November 2008!!! ACK!
Read and compare: Mine and Theirs Too close for comfort? I thought so.
I’m flattered to be imitated but this goes too far.
For now, my complaint has reached the Time Mag health editor and I hope to hear her update on the situation this week. If journalists don’t take pains to avoid stepping on each other’s toes, what are we doing exactly?
[UPDATE: Moving on from the toxicity of the situation, I edited the original post. After the sting faded, there were some interesting meta questions embedded here: journalistically speaking, must mainstream trendspotting rely so heavily on the legwork of others? As a friend pointed out, at what point does one venue's coverage become a stolen idea for another venue? Also implicit here is the question of what happens when yoga bounces into the mainstream? No longer rarified, what are the parameters of representation? To be continued...]
in Culture, Trends and Weird.
wow – good for you for speaking up. i’ll look forward to hearing how Time responds.
In the vein of speaking up. What Ms. Hann says about me is pure slander. As a yoga teacher, and the daughter of a yoga therapist I knew something about the topic before starting to report. I didn’t “dupe” my editor into thinking I had an original idea–TIME isn’t really in the business of breaking news–I was reporting on the trend for a national magazine (and one that is not a competitor of Gaia or Conscious Enlightenment Media).
Ms. Hann, you did not invent the topic. We all get our ideas somewhere. Should only one writer be able to report on a single topic? When reporting on a trend/topic/movement it’s important to interview the people at the top of that field. If I was writing a story on Apple, I would interview Steve Jobs. So would every other reporter. If there was an article in Bicycle magazine about the move toward recycled bikes and then an article appeared in the NY Times Styles section reporting on the same trend, how is that wrong? That’s how news spreads.
The sources I quote in my article were the ones who were constantly cross-referred to me through my research by the people in the field. I conducted my own interviews with these sources and our stories are quite different. Your piece in Gaia is extremely insider baseball and is heavily anecdotal, and you’re right–it’s clear you did tons of reporting. My piece in TIME is more of a trend piece for people on the outside.
It’s also interesting how you attempt to know what my inner process was like writing the story–not very yogic of you (and completely off target).
That said, I wish you the best, I hope you can celebrate the fact that a topic you clearly hold so close to your heart is beginning to creep out into the “mainstream” world.
Namaste.
Hi Alana,
Much of what you say here is true. A trendlet for TIME does not compete with a feature from a niche publication–in fact, usually, the latter heavily informs the former. That’s part of its function in bringing interesting, specialized news to a wider audience.
Of course you would need to include someone like Bo Forbes in your piece–any reporting on the subject must include the experts in the field and she is undoubtedly one.
For example, Yoga Journal ran a similar piece on yoga and psychotherapy shortly after my piece came out in November 2008. Some of the sources were the same. Even some of the insights overlapped. But it was also obvious that they were two very distinct pieces. I was pretty delighted at how they both contributed to the conversation on the topic.
As you say, you are not trying to contribute new insight on the topic, but merely re-report for the mainstream. But as the daughter of a yoga therapist, surely you had access to a far vaster network of sources than I did, and wouldn’t need to simply re-report the lesser-known sources in my piece–which constitute a lot of your piece.
Still, maybe this is all a huge coincidence, and all the researching a person can do on this subject leads to the same people.
Crazy! But if true, you have my sincerest apologies.