Glitzy Huffington Post is a "Jackdaw of journalism" says Observer's Peter Preston

Much respected media commentator Peter Preston has a go at the Huffington Post and other "bright new websites" in his Observer column today claiming they need "grist as well as glitz".
Preston's beef is that sites like Huffington Post are "jackdaws" commenting on news gathered - and paid for - by newspapers and news agencies or taken for free from bloggers.
He writes: "And there's the rub. The Huffington Post has around 50 staff, most of them technical and production hands. It would like more reporters of its own, of course, but doesn't attempt to pay its big bloggers a cent. Honour and glory stand in for a cheque. As CP Scott never said (in schoolboy parody): Comment is free, but facts are expensive.
"The medium-term weakness of all the bright new websites, in short, is that they need grist as well as glitz. But that basic commodity has to be jackdawed together day by day. They can't afford to uncover it for themselves. They have to skate over the surface of commenting on other people's work."
Preston's arguments reflects those of Cale Cowan (see posting below) yesterday in an article in a Canadian paper, the Nanaimo Daily News, when he said newspapers should close their websites for a day to show that 90 per cent of the news content on the internet comes from the press.