My response to the responses about the ridiculousness of Getting It First! Spoiler: I still don't care. tnr.com/blog/plank/104…
— Amy Sullivan (@sullivanamy) July 10, 2012
Readers keep me on the hook:
I assume that many others have already pointed out, but when you say with reference to Amy Sullivan's opinion:
Agreed in this particular instance, as was clear on the day itself. But to banish the whole idea of scooping your rivals in journalism, as Sullivan opined more broadly, is absurd.
Did you by chance go back and re-read what she actually said at the very beginning of her blog post?
Can we talk about the nonsense of caring about which news outlet first reports a big piece of news? I’m not talking about a genuine scoop—a report that wouldn’t have otherwise come to light—but about news that we’re all eventually going to find out anyway. Who Mitt Romney selects to be his running-mate, for instance, or whether the Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate.
"More broadly"? Really? Missing it in your first reaction is understandable at "blogging speed." But when you are responding to readers calling you on the first reaction, I would think you might reconsider. This looks much more like stubborness, being unwilling to admit error, or pure snark rather than just missing the qualification. I realize your blogging style takes you fairly close to that line, but it looks to me like you stepped over it this time.
I'd argue that "news that we’re all eventually going to find out anyway" is a pretty massive category, and includes most of what we call breaking news. Saying that news organizations shouldn't be concerned in getting these truths first is, to my mind, a high-minded but completely absurd proposition. It counts in the micro-case we're discussing – reading in real time a court decision to beat the competition by seconds – but not more broadly.
The Dish 