Joe Schad

spnited is still reeling from writing that Dewey beats Truman headline.

 

Chip Brown was as wrong as often as he was right on this story - but just like the weather forecasters and the bracketoligists, he can claim to have been 99-percent accurate at the end of the day because he got to revise his reporting with new and contradictory information every couple of hours.

This was NOT journalism's finest hour.

He was being played and used as Texas' spinmeister to get what Texas wanted all along. Did Chip Brown kick the competition's ass? Yes, but only because Texas administration used him for their purposes.

But hey, he got a zillion web hits and a thousand new twitter followers. Hoorah!

 

That's great. He drew plenty of hits and subscribers and kicked some ass.

In GENERAL, though, it's becoming a sorry business that what used to pass for a tip (I have an anonymous source saying xxxx) is now the sole reason for a story, tweet, blog or whatever flung out into the web world.

Do you take the time to confirm that? Get a second source? Add some context and risk ESPN getting it first?

The business is really changing.

 

There are good points being made from different points of view. My biggest problem were the two italicized paragraphs below:

Let's not start drinking haterade. We would all love to be the Texas mouthpiece, because Texas is calling the shots here and that can't be denied.

Chip Brown is in a place that we would all dream to be in.

Is it exciting to be in the center of the action? Sure. We would all love to be the mouthpiece for ... anyone? Man, I sure hope not, even if they are "calling the shots." It makes you a shill, not a journalist, if that's your view of things.

I'm going to assume the poster didn't carefully choose his or her words, because ... man. Wow.

And again, let me say ... No, I wouldn't love to be the mouthpiece for Texas, and no, I don't dream of being in Chip Brown's place, as much as I respect the good work he's done.

Ace says it all, especially in his last paragraph.

 

I disagree with spirited completely. That's just flat wrong. Actually, much of the non-journalist chatter I heard during the course of this story -- which is still sort of ongoing, I suppose -- was who was getting what right and where the good information was coming from.

It was actually a Texas high school coach who first mentioned to me that this website seemed to know what it was talking about more than ESPN and it also seemed to be a step ahead of the Texas newspapers on the story (don't know if that's true or not, didn't really follow what was in the American Statesman or Hearst or the DMN). He proved to be right.

 

I will say this. I did not ever subscribe to tweets from CB's website, I only read posted stories on the site. So there could have been a fair amount of noise thrown out there in tweets I never saw. But just from posted stories on the website, I never felt like he was chasing his tail on this.

Ace, I didn't get the impression that he was basing his stories on one source. Is there a reason to think he was? I'm also uncomfortable with using anonymous sources, but is that really a "NEW" development?

 

Ace can speak for himself, but I'm guessing what he finds new is not so much some of those details, but what's considered outstanding reporting these days. There would have been a whole lot more depth to the coverage by whomever "owned" this story or something of similar importance 10 years ago.

 

No. I am saying IN GENERAL that the race to get your development out there is now a matter of seconds or minutes so the pressure is to get something out quick.

So you are better of taking a flier or guessing or making something up than feeling comfortable with what you are posting.

And I am not ripping Chip Brown. Just point out that in this case being minutes ahead was a big deal.

 

Interesting. I asked you a sincere question. I really wanted to know what someone who'd been in the business for even longer than I have considered to be important in the quality of our work. I was coming from a position of believing there's too much hype about breaking stories and not enough about being correct, but I didn't include that because I didn't want to color your response.
You delivered a heck of an answer.
Thanks for that.

 

Sorry, twoback, thought you were being a wiseass.

Being first rather than right is the big problem...as mentioned by many here.

And while Brian might have heard a lot of talk in Texas about who had what first/right, I honestly believe the majority of readers, even of blogs, web sites, etc., don't remember what Chip Brown wrote or what Joe Schad wrote...only that this was the info out there..a lot of it wrong, some of it right... and the end result was nothing likke originally speculated.

I also admit to being jaded by being in a market where college football is not a big deal ... ranking far behind NFL, MLB and even NBA.

 

Johnny, the depth often came from covering over time, then reporting with depth, whereas now, you are covering it more in real time. One story that may cover a 24-hour cycle may have been the rule 10 years ago. Now, it may be 3-4 stories in that cycle. The depth will come from the accumulation of coverage.

On the Monday in question, there was depth in that he reported the TV deal, with details from Bebee before he reported the conference was actually staying together. Once the TV deal was reported, the backstory of the conference-is-saved story later in the day had already been published. Once that story broke later in the day, it was almost anti-climatic.

Now, if this was 1995 and the internet was not a player, we'd get this one in-depth story with details about how Bebee put together a TV deal earlier in the day that ultimately saved the league. We still had that depth. It just comes to us in incremental pieces now.

 

I would change your 1995 to 2005. We've had the internet as a place to post stories for about 20 years. But it has only really exploded in past few years in regards to getting blurbs, tweets, facebook posts, etc. out there as national news.