I have wondered for quite some time now how exactly online news websites operate. Specifically, I frequently notice on news websites (be it the Huffington Post, New York Times, Salon, Yahoo, Fox, NBC, etc pretty much every online news site) how often an article on one website is simply a summary or rephrased version of an article from a competing outlet. There will be a link to the original article but most of the information will be reproduced again.

Legally, how can websites do this? Aren’t news stories copyrightable? Since stories are the product that publishers “sell”, isn’t simply rewording these stories and then putting a link to the original article effectively stealing someone else’s content?

I would understand it if they just put the link without rewriting the article (such as the service Google News provides), but then when they include most of the info from the article, why would anyone then click the link to see the original article? In effect, the website that copied the article receives the traffic and reaps the ad revenue that are actually the result of another outlet’s reporters.

Do websites pay to reprint someone else’s article? Does the original content creator receive a commission of the ad revenue from the reprint?

If someone could clear up my confusion I would appreciate it!