After hopping on the board Friday morning, I saw a question from clemtiger117 that asked a general question about the pressure to break news, and whether that pressure leads to poor journalism.
I initially decided to make the answer to that question the topic for today's blog post, and to answer it largely in the context of the Murphy Holloway fiasco. Cris opted to put it on the front page, but we're posting it to the blog as well.
Generally speaking, absolutely the pressure to be first leads to poor journalism. Now more than ever. All over the place, and not just in sports coverage.
In a 24-hour news cycle, the shelf life for breaking news is infinitely shorter than it used to be. With the proliferation of more avenues to report news, there is much more competition for every morsel of information. Thus there is more pressure to obtain those morsels, and more occurrences of people rushing inaccurate or incomplete news into the public domain. The more this happens, the less trust people have in our line of work. And that's not a good thing.
I have come to believe that many consumers don't get excited or even remember if someone "breaks" this or that. I do think, however, that a news outlet can gradually gain the trust of its consumers and develop a reputation for being authoritative if it consistently breaks news on a beat, and breaks it accurately.
I think we have developed that reputation at TI. I think the majority of Clemson fans on the Internet have come to regard us as the most authoritative, responsible source of Clemson news anywhere. That comes not only from being first an overwhelming majority of the time, but also from being right an overwhelming majority of the time.
This is not me bragging or slinging mud. I don't operate that way. I'm just stating what I believe to be irrefutable facts, and what I believed to be irrefutable facts even before I joined TI.
When you're in the reporting business and you're weighing whether to release information or sit on it, it's often a tough line to walk. It can be extremely stressful, because often there is no clear answer and you are making major decisions on the fly.
No one in this business is perfect, and everyone has made mistakes. I still cringe when I think back to a jump-the-gun episode I had early in my journalism career, and I know Cris probably also has a cringe-inducing moment or two from long ago that he wishes he could take back.
TI's track record with breaking news over the last few years has been exceptional, and that track record comes in large part from years of hard work that have produced excellent networking and sourcing. But that track record has also been shaped by a virtual paranoia about getting stuff wrong. I believe I’m afflicted with it. And I know Cris is afflicted with it.
Cris' phobia has made for some heated moments between him and me, often when I'm 99.9 percent sure of something and he wants to be 100 percent sure of it. But those heated moments, the self-scrutiny, are essential to good reporting. And I believe they've been essential in making TI what it is today.
Regarding the Murphy Holloway story, we knew he was interested in Clemson. But we also knew, at that point, that Clemson really didn't know much about the kid and wanted to know more by getting him onto campus for a visit after he received his release. Key phrase: after he received his release.
There was simply no way, in our eyes at that point, that his transfer to Clemson was a done deal or even close to it. Was it a done deal that he wanted to come to Clemson? Certainly appeared that way. But it was a significant leap, at that time, to say or even imply that Holloway to Clemson was a done deal.
Therefore, the reports of his transfer to Clemson ended up being severely damaging to his chances of landing at Clemson. They were picked up by newspapers across the state. They were then picked up by ESPN's "Bottom Line" crawl. That’s evidently the point where the folks at Ole Miss, who had just learned of his plans to transfer and had not yet granted his release, began to get a little chapped.
I can't speak for the decision-making process for reporting at other media outlets. And if those decision-making processes didn’t end up causing so much havoc, this wouldn’t even be a newsworthy topic in the first place.
But I can say that, having worked closely with Cris on numerous breaking news stories since I joined TI in November of 2008, I am darn proud of the restraint and judgment we use in our news-gathering and decision-making process.
I am darned proud that we are widely regarded as the most trusted Clemson outlet in the market. That trust is not easily nor quickly earned.
All this is said at the risk of me coming off as a chest-beater. That's not the intent or spirit of this at all. I just wanted to provide some background and explanation on how and why we do things the way we do relative to others, because there have been quite a few questions about it on the board.
I hope this sufficiently answers those questions.
LW
No comments:
Post a Comment