I’ve never been a big fan of HuffPo. Not because they rarely pay contributors (if someone wants to give you something for free I see no reason why you shouldn’t take it), but because they steal content and run press releases. That’s lazy, cheap, and unethical.

Today’s story on pasties for travelers is a great example. They received a press release about a new product, wrote a couple of sentences, and then printed the release verbatim. Then they followed the cut-and-paste job by lifting a list related to the story that Jaunted.com compiled. They included a link to the Jaunted story, but there’s no need to click it since you can read the stolen words on HuffPo. Classy. 

Intro sentences
Original? Likely
Number of Words: 50

Press release
Original? No
Number of Words: 111

List of airports copied and pasted from Jaunted.com
Original? No
Number of Words: 196

Spencer Spellman has started a good discussion about this at his Traveling Philosopher blog.