Editor & Publisher: How ‘Orlando Sentinel’ Broke Astronaut Arrest Story. The Orlando Sentinel mixed old-fashioned beat reporting with the modern advantages of the Web to break the sensational story Monday evening of a NASA astronaut’s arrest on charges she attacked the girlfriend of another astronaut in an unfolding love triangle that has drawn national attention.
When, oh when, will it stop being journalism-business news that a newspaper breaks a story on the Web? The real news would have been if the paper had done anything else with a scoop of this kind.
It’s ridiculous — and telling of an industry that remains impossibly hidebound — that anyone would offer the paper a pat on the back for doing the obvious.
on Feb 7th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
The Sentinel invested some pretty good shoe leather in uncovering the story. They broke the story on the Web. So what? For a newspaper to break a story on the Web is still novel. Apparently parts of the news business on the Web is still novel — especially the part aobut newspapers making money online.
One of the first instances was one of the big Texas papers breaking the story about Timothy McVeigh’s confession. In a news conference at an online newspaper convention in Seattle, the ME conceded that the paper broke it on the Web to avoid being scooped on their own story by a rival.
Never the less, the paper had it first — but on the Web.
When asked by CNN about scooping themselves, the editor said:
“We did not scoop ourselves. The last time I checked we were in the same business as CNN. It looks like we scooped CNN.”