Okay, I don’t want to beat a dead horse or overstay my time on this particular soapbox, but here’s one more article (this one from the AP) that raises serious concerns about recent misfires in major media coverage. The following quote, from the end of the linked article, captures the essence of the change that is sweeping the news business…pushed largely by the 24-hour news cycle of cable TV and the minute-by-minute updating possible on the web.
Nowhere was the new landscape more vividly illustrated than this month when Nick Denton, chief of the irreverent Web site Gawker.com, issued a memo scolding his staff for a few cases “where we’ve thought WAY too much before publishing” a story.
Get something out fast with what we know, Denton wrote. We can always update.
“At some media organizations, you might get rapped for running a premature story,” he wrote. “At Gawker Media, you’ll lose way more points for being scooped on a story you had in your hands.”
