The reign of Alex Pareene is truly over, kids!

We just received a message from Wonkette’s new associate editor Jim Newell (who’s got quite a potty mouth on him, we hear, but not quite as big a potty mouth as new editor John Clarke Jr.) about that whole Wonkette stole copyrighted material from the GW Hatchet item we wrote earlier this morning.

“[W]e did take down the post with the Ben Stein photo yesterday afternoon as per their request,” Newell tells Big Head DC. Which, let’s face it, has helped Newell to become our favorite Wonkette editor in ages (he actually communicates, which is unique amongst that breed — God, remember the time when former editor Pareene hid under a table because he was having a panic attack and was afraid to talk to Karen Feld at a party?).

Don’t worry, we’re not forgetting that Wonkette still has a second post up mocking the GW kids to high heaven for bringing the whole copyright violation thing to their attention in the first place, which isn’t exactly fair, since the multi-million Gawker Media owns Wonkette, and, instead of mocking the kids, they could have easily afforded to pay them for the photo. Read more…

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Wonkette, a blog that’s part of the multi-million dollar Gawker Media network, has been running uncredited photographs from the relatively small, independently-funded GW Hatchet, the student-run newspaper of the George Washington University. And that action, we’ve learned, may soon find the snark site in a heap of legal trouble.

Recently, Ben Solomon, a senior photo editor with the publication, asked the editors of the site to remove the uncredited photos. Instead of heeding his request, Wonkette proceeded to mock Soloman, the newspaper and several commenters who defended the paper’s copyright claims.

But the young GW journalists are not deterred.

“The Hatchet’s policy is to make people who use our images illegally aware that they are doing so,” Jake Sherman, editor-in-chief of The Hatchet told Big Head DC. ”We do this often, with the prevalence of Facebook, etc.” Read more…

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