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On Monday, when we were talking about Ian Shapira’s gripe with Gawker excerpting his Post material too heavily, I noted that mainstream media outlets have a widespread and unfortunate tendency to refuse crediting any rival outlet — print, online, TV, whatever — with being first on a story if they can somehow get away with it. Here’s a great example.
My friend Noah Shachtman runs Wired‘s Danger Room groupblog. For the past week, he’s broken and advanced a story about the Marines banning social media like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace from its networks. This comes on top of years’ worth of reporting on the military’s adjustment to Web 2.0. If you’ve read anything about this issue, it’s because of Noah — either his stuff directly, or people ripping his stuff off. The Pentagon’s public affairs second-in-command, Price "Straight Outta CNAS" Floyd, is currently tweeting about the merits and drawbacks of social media. Noah is why.
Here’s a Los Angeles Times story about the social media ban that doesn’t reference Noah at all. Here’s a Wall Street Journal story about the social media ban that doesn’t reference Noah at all. Here’s an AFP story about the social media ban that doesn’t reference Noah at all. Here’s a Christian Science Monitor story about the social media ban that doesn’t reference Noah at all. Here’s a Voice of America story about the social media ban that, perversely, references the AP, AFP and Reuters and doesn’t reference Noah at all.
This isn’t the fault of any individual reporter. It’s the fault of an outdated newspaper convention that equates proper referencing with an admission of professional failure. Before the internet, it was pretty easy to get away with slighting your colleagues. But now that everyone has GoogleNews at their fingertips, it looks like exactly what it is: churlish and archaic vanity. Everyone can see who got the story first. Not a single reader, I’ll bet, will ever say, "Aha! Because Noah Shachtman got the story first, clearly Julian Barnes is an inferior reporter!"
It’s not just blogs, either. There are a ton of specialist newsletters doing deep in-the-weeds reporting — Inside the Pentagon is one — that newspapers treat like uncreditable wire copy. This has to end. I credited Bloomberg and the LAT in my story today, because they got material I used. It didn’t hurt my pride or discredit my piece. Not citing itwould have, though.
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I’m with you a thousand percent on this. But it is not an archaic convention when you have to credit another news outlet with a scoop, it is what makes us red-blooded reporters man. I hate getting beat. So if you are rewriting someone else’s scoop, definitely credit. But rewriting someone else’s scoop is for the effing birds. It’s already defeat. I tweeted Noah’s social media scoop and have yet to follow for the WaTi. I say this not because I don’t think it’s an important story–it is. But rather I want to be the first word on the next story. Recognizing that there are so few of us left who cover this kind of thing, AND that everyone has access to google news, I feel I should be trying to cover as much new ground in my reporting as possible. So informed citizens should read Shachtman, Ackerman, Barnes, Roggio, Gordon, Sanger, Hess, Lee, Gorman, Solomon, Josh Meyer, etc… They add new facts everyday to the discourse. But when you read me, I am going to try my best to tell you something none of those other reporters got yet. As I expect fresh stuff from them as well. Of course there are exceptions. There should be. But gone are the days when everyone should be trying to match everything else. There is no reason to be comprehensive like that in the age of the web, unless you fashion yourself an aggregator. But if you are a reporter, just break news.
Of course, that can easily be turned around on the good fellas at Wired, who also dislike noting wen they borrow the work of others…
Spencer: That’s really kind of you. Thanks, man.
Josh: Thank you for not letting this little get-together turn too sickly sweet. We can always count on you for a dash of vinegar and a splash of haterade.
Ironically, I also find myself on the other end of this argument. I’m doing a profile of a Senior Government Official for Wired magazine. And I’m assembling facts from all sorts of sources — books, magazines, decades-old newspaper stories. The Conde Nast feature journalism format doesn’t really allow for proper citation of all those sources. Luckily, we’re talking Wired, so the online version of the piece will get 10-20 times more readers than the print edition. And online, you can hyperlink.