...next caller.

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.

 

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 fucking knows because nothing's happened yet!

 

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

 

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

 

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 shit everywhere and claim it as their own.

Just my .02.

 

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

 

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 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.

 

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 fuck one of them cows." The other one says, "No, let's walk down there and fuck 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.

 

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.

 

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?

 

Exactly.