As you may have noticed, we get a number of our stories from the KY Press News Service. This is a syndication service provided by the Kentucky Press Association (of which we are a member). We pay an annual fee for the service, and in return we can use stories published through that service, and other outlets can use any of our stories that are published through the service.
Media outlets large and small participate in KPNS, but many of the stories picked up by KPNS are from the larger outlets like the Courier-Journal and the Herald-Leader, since those stories tend to be both more important and to cover a wider area. If the stories are about politics or policy, we often use those.
Recently, we were contacted by the publisher of one outlet asking that we indicate in our social media posts where the story came from. We were already doing that in the story itself, but the publisher wanted people following us on social media to know that the original story came from their outlet.
I cautioned that publisher that because of space limitations in Twitter, the attribution would probably be abbreviated. And, because we usually use the same message on all our social media, that same abbreviation would be carried over. The publisher was fine with that.
After thinking about it, I decided to start doing the same for some other stories we get through KPNS. Not sure we will do it for every KPNS story, but we might expand it to more of the outlets we carry regularly.
So, when you see “via C-J” or similar on a social post, this is why.
And like I’ve said before, if you haven’t subscribed to your local newspaper AND to the Herald-Leader and/or the Courier-Journal, you should do so. (As well as becoming a member here, of course. 😉) We need those outlets to be strong and effective as part of our democracy.
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