Wednesday, July 07, 2004

Getting it First: Amid the John Edwards buzz is the embarrassing "scoop" by the New York Post. In an unsourced, unbylined story, the esteemed tabloid proclaimed that John Kerry picked Dick Gephardt as his running mate.

That's part of the trouble with trying to get big scoops. Howard Kurtz figures that MSNBC got the first actual scoop, tirelessly confirming with three sources overnight that Edwards was the pick. The network broke the news at 7:30 yesterday morning. Hooray for MSNBC!

I don't know about you, but I was asleep at 7:30 yesterday morning. It wasn't until my alarm clock went off that NPR told me that Edwards was the likely pick. So MSNBC's scoop was essentially worthless.

As a journalist, I'm under constant pressure to get the story first, both externally from my editors and internally from my pride. I love seeing other newspapers write stories about subjects I've already covered.

But as a reader, I couldn't care less.

I remember years ago when all the speculation was about whether Texas Gov. George W. Bush was going to run for president. I was covering Texas government at the time, so I got to hear the question of Bush's political ambitions pop up at every occasion. Even elementary school kids were asking him.

So reporters kept writing about it. People had inside sources indicating whether Bush was leaning one way or another. (My favorite story is about how Laura Bush publicly stated that she very much did NOT want her husband to run)

Eventually, the Austin American-Statesman reported that Bush had organized an exploratory committee, which was essentially the same as announcing his candidacy for president. So it seems that the Statesman got it first. But I really don't know because I wasn't reading every other newspaper in the country that was covering this. Maybe one of them had reported that development the day before.

But it didn't matter because within a couple days, everybody was reporting it. Those people in other states were not put in any disadvantage by finding out a day or two later.

What's worse is, the Statesman essentially scooped a press release. If every newspaper just waited, Bush would have made his announcement whether he was going to run or not. The endless speculation only drew up publicity for him.

Reporters spent obscene amounts of time cultivating sources and digging around to see if anybody knew what Bush would do. If journalists had used all that manpower and undercover sources for something important, we could have probably uncovered every bit of corruption lurking in the Texas government.

Instead, we closely follow and scoop routine announcements by politicians, who have us completely trained. It's a circus, and the media are the animals that are willing to perform any tricks for a scrap of meat.