“You’re in the Mail on Sunday!” gibbers Big A.

I am taken aback. Fearing some sort of expose regarding the chickens, I hurry over to his place to investigate…

Hm. I drop a note to John Wellington, who is the Mail on Sunday’s Managing Editor. It reads:

‘Dear Mr Wellington,

On page 74 of the March 16th issue of ‘The Mail on Sunday’ you published a 392-word piece headlined ‘Blog of the Week – Adventures of a family man who gave up his high-powered job and moved to rural Norfolk’.

The piece (in its entirety) consisted of copyrighted articles lifted without my knowledge or consent from a website for which I am the registered owner…

[bit more blah, yours sincerely, etc.]‘

Not having worked for the Mail on Sunday before, and a stated wordage figure proving elusive, I pluck a conservative amount out of the air and stick it on the bottom of an invoice, which goes off via the kind auspices of the G.P.O. To the Mail on Sunday’s credit, they pay me my two hundred quid quicker than most biggish companies would, and John Wellington sends me his (what I am sure are sincere) apologies.

There’s nothing quite so Rikfromtheyoungonesesque about people with blogs getting on their high horse about print journalists, except perhaps print journalists getting on their high horse about people with blogs. Clearly, however, there’s a little bit of a mutual-understanding issue here. I always go for cock-up over conspiracy, but one paragraph of his reply to me does seem a bit… a bit not quite fitting in with what I thought things were about.

‘We generally take the view that blogs published on the internet have already been placed in the public domain by their authors and, in case of amateur writers, most people are happy to have their work recognised and displayed to a wider audience.’

Discuss.