Joe Schad

Wish there was some way to quantify the following:

Number of extra website hits (and future extra hits) on a site that consistenly gets stuff first.

vs.

Number of hits lost today (and in the future) because people decide they can't necessarily believe what's being reported on that site. So they start going elsewhere.

Or is the pennies-per-thousand hits in ad revenue so infinitesmal that there is no monetary advantage to risking credibility over increased hits by smiply throwing shit on the wall.

A good point. With one caveat: 1n 1995, you would be reading one story with details that are accurate. In 2010 you get the same information in pieces . . . surrounded by stories and tweets and blogs that are completely inaccurate.

Now, which is easier for a reader of a complex subject to digest?

It's one reason I do not spend time following these kinds of breaking stories from update to update. Until a scroll at the bottom of a screen says "State U. SIGNS agreement . . . " then there really is no story in my world. I guess media can't afford to take that attitude, but it's how I get my news.

 

I'd agree with that. But I'll ask this: What makes one "just" minutes ahead? Let's say you and I cover the same team for competing outlets. You break a story right now -- 11:25 CDT. I see the story, make a quick call or two confirming what I read then have something posted by 11:35-11:40. Now, you may have done a lot of legwork based on years of source building and relationships but at the end of the day, in this day and age, it might only buy you a 10-20 minute jump start on the competition. Of course, the key there may be using that legwork to get details the other guy will never be able to confirm in short order, but still, now you are asking the reader to notice those details.

 

True dat.Just being conservative with my timeline.

 

Who's story goes to the top of Google? That's who wins.

Eeeech.

 

It's not the readers noticing anymore.

In your scenario I get a 15 minute jump on a breaking story.

In that 15 minutes I have posted it on the paper's website, facebook and twitter.

My hundreds of twitter followers see it and retweet it and link to the story on the web.

ESPN has a scrawl that says that ACE is reporting xxxxx.

If people are searching for the story, it is at the top of the google search because I have all these links to it.

You come along and are old, old news. Everyone is talking about my story, linking to my site, finding it on google and seeing it on ESPN (until they get their own story).

It's not necessarily a bad thing. It just doesn't encourage good reporting.

 

Without getting into whether it's good to have all the new platforms now ...

What I noticed on the beat I "owned" from 2002-08 is the more I began doing other things during a work day -- blogging, Web updating, etc., and eventually Twitter, podcasts and such -- is there just wasn't any way to stay on top of things like before. The time you spend doing all the extras takes you away from talking with sources, thinking of fresh angles, and so many other things I'm sure I don't have to spell out for a bunch of veterans on this board.

I could be wrong, and it's possible I'm the only one who noticed this, but it diminishes depth. There is no way it doesn't. You might get more posts/stories/whatevers out of it, but the overall depth suffers. Has to.

 

Fixed.

 

Hey, it's my fantasy, dammit.

 

Johnny, know what you mean. I was at a news conference fairly recently where a coach announced the suspension of a player. I had my phone turned to mute and was listening to the coach talk and thinking of questions to ask, etc. When it was over, I had a frantic message on my phone from online to confirm the player suspension because two other outlets had already tweeted it/posted it on their sites either as the coach announced it or immediately after. By paying attention to what the coach was saying, as opposed to tweeting or posting, I missed being the first to report.

 

There's always a level of resentment towards some of the journalists who hit it big early in their careers and that's unfortunate. Schad has been at ESPN five years now and he's still one of the youngest on-air guys they have. If Schad fucked up nearly as much as people on this thread say, there's no way he lasts at ESPN this long.

He got the story wrong, as did almost everybody who was chasing it. Chip Brown was wrong quite a few times during the process, but was right at the beginning and at the end, so he looks good. The truth of the matters is, if it had been Schlabach who had the story wrong, I doubt anyone starts a thread about him.

 

I think ESPN likes guys who are willing to regularly risk being wrong in order to be first.

 

Of course, because even if wrong, they can always "learn" about the correct version of the news a little later and report it as if it was brand new