...next caller.

[Moland Spring]

I understand all this. I get that readers don't care who beats who by 10 minutes, especially because so much of it is who posts it faster now. But still... There is something fulfilling about walking into a press box, looking at a competitor, and knowing he learned the news when he read it on your Web site. For me, that's what keeps me going at the news. Readers may not care. But I still do.

 

[henryhenry]

I never said the readers care... What I said was, any reporter that doesn't care about getting beat on the biggest NBA story of the year is in the wrong business.
Am I wrong? Isn't breaking news our job?

But when you get "beat" by 10 minutes on a Web site, you're not really getting beat.

The fact of the matter is: "breaking" news, as regarding the common practice, is overrated. Being the first person to say where Allen Iverson got traded ... does not matter. No one cares who has it first. No one cares who "broke" that story. No one remembers because no one cares.

Now ... digging for a story like the S.F. Chron reporters did, getting information that no one else has, and writing about it ... that's when people care who did the work. But so few people engage in that type of reporting, that nobody's making a fuss over it.

Your point is well-taken, Moland. But there's not a way in the world that anyone can "beat" or "get beat" on this Iverson story -- or any "big" story, like a T.O. story, that gets so much hype beforehand and so much chatter afterward -- once it's out there, it's out there for everyone. And it doesn't matter who had it first, last, or anywhere in between.

right on buck. we agree on this.

 

[buckweaver]

I understand all this. I get that readers don't care who beats who by 10 minutes, especially because so much of it is who posts it faster now. But still... There is something fulfilling about walking into a press box, looking at a competitor, and knowing he learned the news when he read it on your Web site. For me, that's what keeps me going at the news. Readers may not care. But I still do.

It depends on the story, though.

If you're David Aldridge and you feel satisfied because your Iverson story hit the Web 10 minutes before ESPN got ahold of it ... well, you've lost focus of the big picture.

If you're Karen Crouse, and you just polished off the final writethru of your Laveranues Coles story ... now that's something to be fulfilled about.

It doesn't matter who breaks the first story -- and you shouldn't feel fulfilled if you're the one breaking it. The thing about news is, it's new every day. Then it gets old, and then what do you have?

 

[Elliotte Friedman]

I wonder what your employers would think of all these responses.

Understand, at 36, I think very differently than I did at 26. Ten years ago, I wanted to beat everybody at every waiver-wire transaction. Now, I understand the big picture. Sometimes you will win, and sometimes you will lose. That's life.

However, that doesn't mean I have to put up with b.s. To me, claimining a scoop when it isn't yours equates with plagiarism. After all, if ESPN is claiming it broke the Iverson trade when another outlet really got it first, that deserves close scrutiny.

No, the viewers don't care. I understand that. But we care. And we should monitor ourselves for accuracy and expediency. As much as Aldridge annoyed me that day, it doesn't mean that he should be ripped off, either.

 

[DrRosenpenis]

This whole thread stinks of ego. Reporters are supposed to help inform their readers, whether or not they are first or fifth to break a story.

This is another case of writers becoming part of the story. Not good.

 

[buckweaver]

The problem, Elliotte, is that accuracy is (too) often forsaken for expediency when it comes to "breaking" these stories.

So we get a dozen Iverson to enter-team-name-here stories every day, from different sources, and different outlets, when the reality is ... nobody ****ing knows because nothing's happened yet!

 

[steveu]

MAN
BREAKS
PENIS

This was an actual headline on the cover of a daily tab I worked at in Kingston, Jamaica. Talk about breaking news ...

This disqualifies the man from taking part in the **** In A Box skit on SNL...

 

[Shaggy]

My boss cares. He signs my paychecks. End of story.

 

[thebiglead]

Surprised at some answers here.

Guess the mentality is different. If I'm an outlet, 'news' is my #1 priority. Features are great. Takeouts are wonderful. Columnists are swell. But ultimately, I believe news sells.

In fact, in the Iverson scenario, I would have instructed my PR staff at the paper to have a shell of an Iverson release ready to go.

If i were running the show, as soon as Aldridge hung up with his sources and got the deal, I would have had him fire off a two-sentence email to his EE, ME, SE, and PR team with the crux of the trade (naturally, they would all need to have PDAs in case they were at lunch when this hit).

Within 3-4 minutes, PR would have released the breaking news statement to the wires, ESPN, BBC, relevant sports blogs, etc. Send that **** everywhere and claim it as their own.

Just my .02.

 

[henryhenry]

you're missing the point biglead

a personnel transaction isn't a scoop - if everybody else can do a story within four minutes - equal to yours - the information isn't that valuable -

but since you are all about p.r., and not substance, you'd have your p.r. staff running around like a chinese fire drill

meanwhile, a smarter SE and reporter are working on a story that can't be replicated within four minutes - a story with substance

 

[Moland Spring]

Insane.
A personnel transaction isn't a scoop? Really? So any player being traded to any team isn't a scoop? Or any player signing or any coaching signing isn't a scoop? Really?
We must work for different sports editors.
You can call it ego all you want. But what reporter wouldn't want to be the best on his beat, to be the guy breaking all the news? Is that so wrong?
Of course, investigations like the Balco one are better. But if you're not interested in breaking the story of an area's icon being traded, then something is wrong.
I'm with The Big Lead. Break it, let everyone know, and then your readers know who to turn to in need of news. It's brand naming.

 

[DrRosenpenis]

Of course a reporter should want to be the best on his/her beat. But, sometimes you just have to suck it up and deal with it when someone steals your breaking news, fair or otherwise. It happens nearly every day in this biz, nothing anyone can do about it.

Stop trying to make yourself part of the story by trying to convince anyone who will listen that you had the story five minutes before the other guy. Spend that time trying to break another story.

 

[Lester Bangs]

Insane.
A personnel transaction isn't a scoop? Really? So any player being traded to any team isn't a scoop? Or any player signing or any coaching signing isn't a scoop? Really?
We must work for different sports editors.
You can call it ego all you want. But what reporter wouldn't want to be the best on his beat, to be the guy breaking all the news? Is that so wrong?
Of course, investigations like the Balco one are better. But if you're not interested in breaking the story of an area's icon being traded, then something is wrong.
I'm with The Big Lead. Break it, let everyone know, and then your readers know who to turn to in need of news. It's brand naming.

Of course, we all want the big scoops. All of them.

It's like the old story about two cows sitting up on the hill and looking down at the herd. One says to the other, "let's run down there and **** one of them cows." The other one says, "No, let's walk down there and **** all of those cows."

Getting the trades first are great for today, and maybe for tomorrow if you don't get beat on the Mets signing Zito or whatever. But when you do reporting of substance -- Balco, Watergate, et al -- that's when you become a great reporter and that is ultimately what the public remembers. Beating The Mouse by 10 minutes is great ... now go have a beer and pat yourself on the back. It doesn't make you a great reporter or even good at your job beyond that moment in time. And, ultimately, it has almost no staying power with the readers. To me, it's one of the biggest problems with today's journalism. We are so busy trying to please the public's short attention span we have no interest in actually making them smarter and/or improving their lives.

 

[SF_Express]

This whole thread stinks of ego. Reporters are supposed to help inform their readers, whether or not they are first or fifth to break a story.

This is another case of writers becoming part of the story. Not good.

This makes zero sense to me.

If a website gets a reputation of getting a lot of news first, it makes it a valuable tool to readers -- and keeps them informed, as you say. People want information, and they want it when it happens.

If my site has a story 30 minutes before the main competition, that's value.

And make no mistake -- although I wouldn't have thought 10 years ago that I'd write a sentence like this -- if a player gets hurt or traded to a better or worse situation, that can have HUGE Fantasy sports implications, and if you own that guy, you knowing that news earlier than the other owners could give you a significant leg in making the appropriate transaction before somebody else does.

So getting it first servers the reader again -- and like it or not, this whole Fantasy business is extremely significant to readers of sports websites and the sports pages of newspaper websites.

Lord help me.

 

[Alma]

While I, too, believe in-depth journalism is more valuable, I'm not sure how its mission conflicts. You can break both news and hearts, and many papers do it everyday.

That said, we're talking ten minutes on a Web site. I think it matters whether ESPN had its own quotes and detail, or fired off some quoteless 230-word blurb that could have been summarized from Aldridge's piece. Can anyone tell me?

 

[SF_Express]

While I, too, believe in-depth journalism is more valuable, I'm not sure how its mission conflicts. You can break both news and hearts, and many papers do it everyday.

Exactly.

 

[SF_Express]

But again ... the problem arises when the expediency overrules the accuracy.

And we see THAT every day, too.

That's being ignored in this discussion. It's all fine and well when you're first AND right. But the problem is, in a story like Iverson's, there were about 100 firsts before there was 1 right.

Yep, we had another thread about this, and it's definitely a peril in all of this.

 

[Moland Spring]

That's the nature of the business. We report as things are happening, not after they are finished... I don't see any way around this. It's like reporters covering baseball's offseason. What a nightmare. Even the best ones are wrong all the time, because people change their minds.

 

[Lester Bangs]

That's the nature of the business. We report as things are happening, not after they are finished... I don't see any way around this. It's like reporters covering baseball's offseason. What a nightmare. Even the best ones are wrong all the time, because people change their minds.

Sorry, I don't buy that.

Yes, people change their minds -- but reporting every little rumor or "forcing" stories by asking a source about every little rumor (ex. Saban-to-'Bama) -- doesn't mean we can't do a helluva lot better in getting things right first.

For me: accuracy > expediency.

For many, that's not the case.

You report what's right as it stands. You cannot worry about what's going to be right tomorrow. What's accurate today is not always going to be accurate tomorrow. No getting way from that. If you want to be relevant, you have to report what's accurate right now.

 

[henryhenry]

This whole thread stinks of ego. Reporters are supposed to help inform their readers, whether or not they are first or fifth to break a story.

This is another case of writers becoming part of the story. Not good.

This makes zero sense to me.

If a website gets a reputation of getting a lot of news first, it makes it a valuable tool to readers -- and keeps them informed, as you say. People want information, and they want it when it happens.

If my site has a story 30 minutes before the main competition, that's value.

And make no mistake -- although I wouldn't have thought 10 years ago that I'd write a sentence like this -- if a player gets hurt or traded to a better or worse situation, that can have HUGE Fantasy sports implications, and if you own that guy, you knowing that news earlier than the other owners could give you a significant leg in making the appropriate transaction before somebody else does.

So getting it first servers the reader again -- and like it or not, this whole Fantasy business is extremely significant to readers of sports websites and the sports pages of newspaper websites.

Lord help me.

i have to admit, i never considered the fantasy angle

you're saying that if site A beat site B by 10 minutes then the readers of site A will make fantasy deals based on the info?

but don't all these 'aggregating' sites just cherry-pick news from primary providers - so any smart fantasy player will just read the aggregating sites for news breaks - doesn't matter who breaks it

am i missing something?