His departure followed a complaint that his blog (of which he is but one contributor) had been overaggregating content, making it less of an incentive to visit the original source. Julie Moos at Poynter outlined the ethical dilemma involved. There were some questions, too, about the techniques of attribution and linking. These came from a journalist working for the Columbia Journalism Review, who has outlined the saga in a post today.
The departure has drawn criticism for the way it was seemingly handled, and in that regard the Poynter faculty has weighed in with a variety of views. The always lively Reuters blogger, Felix Salmon, has chipped in on the matter, too, wondering about the validity of journalistic standards in an age of aggregation.
But the concerns are significant in an age of content curation, sharing and linking, because they raise questions about the obligations of media to provide credit and direct traffic elsewhere as they build upon stories.