Journalism 2.0: A case study

While I was away, the most interesting story in Dallas city politics was the hoky-poky council candidacy moves of Al Lipscomb. The whole thing made no sense, what with Fantroy being an ally of Lipscomb's and all.

Then, at 3:40 this afternoon, Tim Rogers reported on The Frontburner:

Tonight on Fox 4, Paul Adrian will air a report that shows Councilman Fantroy has been accused of misappropriating about $50,000. The money belongs to, of all places, Paul Quinn College.

It's now 8:13 PM. There's no mention of it at DallasNews.com. Nor at Fox 4. Topix is a a whole day behind.

This is isn't even a case of random unsubstantiated anonymous blogosphere rumors. Tim is a professional journalist and The Frontburner is the D Magazine blog. If Tim was wrong, Fox has had more than four hours to respond. If they had, I'm sure there would have been a correction on The Frontburner.

We'll see what's in Fox 4's 9:00 report, but this is a great example of how the rules (should) have changed. Fox is presumably holding the story for the newscast, or doesn't have a dynamic enough site to carry the update. The DMN presumably either doesn't have information that the scoop is credible or doesn't have their story together yet and doesn't want to give Fox credit.

Both are performing a disservice to their readers: Fox's story is news. It was news as soon as it was in the can. It was really news once Tim teased it.

What can you report, if you don't have anything of your own? You can report exactly what we did above. And it's absolutely true.

In the J2.0 world, you report it as soon as you know it -- and if you know it from your competitor, you link to that competitor and go try to add something new to the story or find another scoop on which you can beat them.

---

UPDATE: It's 6:00 the morning after. Paul Adrian delivered a boffo piece of reporting -- damning documents a go-go and great footage of an attempted interview with Fantroy. Only thing missing from where I sat was how he came upon the story, which has apparently been quietly brewing for months. Still nothing at DallasNews.com or the Fox 4 site.

Comments

[Lex]

Good for Paul. He and I were in a seminar together at the Poynter Institute about 10 years ago. Very nice guy.