Got a tweet from WNST:

News: Terps hold first practice on new Byrd Stadium turf: Maryland held a two-hour workout inside Byrd Stadium F... bit.ly/QXG531

— WNST (@WNST) August 10, 2012

I click on the link and am off to read it. But it seems oddly familiar ...

So ... I go back to the umterps.com page. I knew they'd put out a press release earlier in the day, since I had read it. I decide to compare the Terps press release with the WNST article.

The WNST article is EXACTLY the same as the Terps press release. Word for word.

Now, I know that folks in the news media business sometimes simply regurgitate whatever it is that they're fed by the source of their news. If WNST had taken the press release, tweaked it a bit (rewording, rephrasing, etc.) and possibly tossed in some other relevant information to "make it their own," that wouldn't have surprised me at all.

The exact word-for-word nature of this did surprise me. And not only that, if you look at the WNST page, the byline reads "WNST staff." Now unless WNST is writing press releases for the Maryland Terps, I tend to doubt that they actually wrote this article.

Am I wrong to assume this is not exactly the standard way to do things? As far as I can tell, they simply ripped off the press release and presented it as if they had written it themselves. Is this normal? Is this something that is accepted?

Does it just tell me that WNST is not worth my time?

Here are the direct links:

WNST article

UM Terps press release