Time to rethink the scoop mentality?
It’s hammered into every aspiring reporter’s head from the first day on the college paper or at J-school: There’s nothing better than beating the pants off the competition. And it’s basically the reigning ethos in the news biz today, especially since the industry tends to attract highly competitive folks. But is it time to rethink the scoop mentality? The second-by-second approach you sometimes see played out on cable TV can clearly be counterproductive, when everyone shouts “the miners are alive!” without having the facts nailed down. But what about newspapers and magazines? In an age of real-time blogging, does it make sense for them to handle some stories with the utmost secrecy? Consider this post from Business Week’s Stephen Baker: “I’ve been leading a secret life on this blog. For months and months I worked on this math cover story. I was talking to mathematicians and people who use math, and it was dominating my thinking. It was in many ways the most interesting thing going on–and I couldn’t blab about it in the blog.” … That led to a long rant, at Buzz Machine world headquarters, by Jeff Jarvis: “Is it better for Steve and Business Week to have held back their story from public view until it was packaged and polished and delivered in print, or to have sought out the best advice on it from an informed public by seeking collaboration via Steve’s blog as the story was being formed? Which produces a better product and a better business?
Source: Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post
Link: My secret life: Keeping the math cover story out of the blog; by Stephen Baker, Business Week
Link: The value of scoops vs. collaboration; by Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine
