Vampire journalists and the problem with crowdsourcing

A long while ago I asked folks at a design blog called DesignBoom if they wanted to participate. They sent a long letter saying no and saying why not. They also have this open letter to journalists (takers, not sharers) here: http://www.designboom.com/openletter.html

I'm pasting in the text of their email to me (which I hope is not a violation, but it's very interesting)

international design newsstand
when designboom started its publishing activity in 1999,
we had no experience in the field of communication
but a 20-year-background as designers and design-consultants
(and long collaborations with famed designers as
achille castiglioni, vico magistretti, enzo mari, renzo piano,
konstantin grcic, campana brothers etc).
we simply wanted to share our knowledge,
and we were attracted by a 'tool' (internet publishing)
that could avoid most financial, national and cultural barriers.

at that time 'only' journalists (print press) were distributing information
on the design culture, but from our point of view, they did it on a
very naive basis, talking about forms without really understanding the
cultural aim of its creators and the technical development of production.
they had a poor 'corporate' approach (interpretation of press releases)
which brought a lot of mystification into to the field of design.

we also wanted to connect with other websites and create an international
channel of more in-depth-information. designboom created the
'international design newsstand' with contributions from websites from usa,
australia, china, japan, colombia, equador, spain, belgium, germany,
sweden, UK, ... and had monthly issues of local design news.
each contributor was asked to send in articles and all articles were edited
into a feature that was then available to be published on all contributors
websites. after more than two years organizing these issues, educating
other to respect, collaboration and timely delivery, we lost the interest in such
a project.

on the concept of collaboration
in the meantime, after 7 years, designboom advanced to the web's most popular
international design publication, with much more than 1 million of readers monthly
from 156 countries. I'm not sure if what I am now going to say is for interest for your article.
maybe you prefer to write about the immense potential of crowdsourcing,
and there is for sure.
but would you include it in your concept of 'culture'?
that's why I guess a critical point of view would also fit into your article, right?

With crowdsourcing, journalism is becoming much more collaborative, more egalitarian.
crowdsourcing = a job, outsources to an undefined, generally large group of people in
the form of an open call over the Internet.

as you for sure know, journalism has been outsourced since many years to undefined
'freelance' writers for a very low salary and consequentially their quality of work
could not be always sufficient. that is why EACH DAY we receive more than 20 requests
from journalists (and pretenders) asking for help -
here are 4 examples of friday june 18th (just to give you an idea...)
...
I am contacting you from a German magazine called ART. To illustrate an
article in our next issue I am looking for a high resolution version of the
attached image. Would you be able to help me to get in the possession of
that picture? I would highly appreciate any hint.
Kind regards,
...
I am the photoeditor of a greek weekly supplement 'Tachydromos'.
We are preparing our deco issue and one of our editors is interested
in doing a story on the monobloc plastic chair by Colombo that you
published in your last newsletter. Would it be pssible to send us high
resolution images with the photos of the chairs around the world to
include in our story?
...
WWE would like to do a short telephone or email interview about
the history of the folding chair. It's for an article on props used
in the wrestling ring.
Thank you in advance for your help,
...
We would like to use this photo in a web article about influential
architects and designers. May we have your permission to go ahead?
Our deadline is tonight.
I would need to hear back from you in the next few hours.
Best regards,
(name)
Picture Editor
Forbes.com

on the concept of culture transmission
yes. a few years ago we had two people in the office only for
answering all those emails of journalists, all questions,
sending out images for free, ...
in the hope of a cultural exchange, some sort of mutual relationship,
whatever keeps us awake.
instead we rarely received a thank you or a mention for collaboration!
not to mention all our photos and texts of articles, which print press
(from 'important' daily newspapers to glossy magazines and
internet blogs) regularly use without permission and credits
or false credits.
I am also a design historian, who has worked closely with the
masters of last centuries design production.
we have a huge archive of facts, images, related info, which are just known to us.
we
very famous american museums curate design history exhibitions
with 80% info from designboom, from our own historical researches,
using entire exerts and scientific without a single credit ...

it culminated in an open letter to a few curators and many journalists
- may 2006
http://www.designboom.com/openletter.html
of course, things have not changed at all, but we have learnt to live with it.

on the concept of dignity of work
designboom is one of the few companies in our field, which pays a
regular salary to ALL our collaborators, for our researches, photos etc
and offers financial help to all internship applicants.
from a business point of view, it is just crazy to continue to implement
this free collaboration service, and never receiving any credits, feedback, contacts.
this evolution seems not to be a 'cultural' transformation, but a clever form of
manipulation, egocentrism and business oriented marketing.