Post the scoop before your reader scoops it
He had argued with his staff whether a scoop should have been immediately posted online or not, only to discover, when he did post the article, that people had already been discussing the ‘news’ for two hours.
"It is not TV or radio or other papers that are going to beat you -- it is your readers. There are more of them, they know more than you, and they don't have deadlines."
A reality apparently misunderstood by The Independent, whose original policy was not to release scoops online, because they thought readers wouldn't buy the paper if they already knew the news.
It seems the developments of news distribution are forcing newsroom strategies and answers onto newspapers, not the other way around.
Source: Poynter.org
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FYI - just to clarify what was stated in the above entry v.s. what was meant by my original comment. I am in favor of 'scooping yourself' and always have been. We in fact did not have an 'argument' about posting a story early - we had what is a common discussion in many newsrooms about the specifics of posting early in a specific case.
As there is small justification to wait in most cases, the discussion was in fact brief. It was only after I discovered the news had been broken earlier on a community bulletin board that we realized how pointless even our passing thoughts of holding back the 'news' were.
thanks
Damon Kiesow
Managing Editor / Online
NashuaTelegraph.com