A simple way to explain it is this:
Imagine someone spends days investigating a story, cultivating sources, verifying facts, traveling to the scene, and taking legal risks to publish it first. Then, minutes later, another site rewrites the same information in different words, adds a link to the original, and captures much of the search traffic, ad revenue, or social engagement. The second site benefits from work it didn't pay for.
That's why people often describe this as parasitic—not because every follow-up article is unethical, but because the value extracted is disproportionate to the value contributed.
You could explain it like this:
Breaking news is expensive to produce. Original reporters invest time, money, expertise, and often take risks to uncover information. A copycat article that simply rewrites those facts—even if it links to the original—can compete for readers, search rankings, and advertising revenue without making a comparable investment. In that sense, it's "parasitic": it depends on someone else's work for its existence while diverting attention and revenue away from the creator.
The link itself doesn't necessarily solve the problem because:
- Many readers never click through to the original.
- Search engines may rank the rewritten version alongside—or sometimes even above—the original.
- The copycat publisher earns page views and ad revenue from information they didn't gather.
- If many sites do this, the organizations funding original reporting have less incentive and fewer resources to investigate future stories.
A useful analogy is:
If one restaurant invents a new recipe after months of testing, and the restaurant next door immediately copies it, sells it to the same customers, and just says "Inspired by Restaurant A," the credit doesn't compensate Restaurant A for losing customers. The attribution is good, but it doesn't replace the value taken.
That said, not every article based on another outlet's reporting is parasitic. Journalism often builds on previous reporting in legitimate ways. Examples include:
- Adding meaningful new facts or independent reporting.
- Providing expert analysis or historical context.
- Interviewing additional sources.
- Explaining why the story matters to a different audience.
- Clearly attributing the original reporting while creating genuinely new value.
So the distinction isn't simply "Did they link?" It's "Did they contribute something substantial, or did they mainly monetize someone else's reporting?"
In short:
- Original reporting creates new information.
- Value-added reporting builds on it with meaningful additional work.
- Copycat reporting largely repackages it to capture the same audience.
That's why people sometimes call the last category "parasitic": its success depends on another organization's investment while contributing relatively little that's new.
