I... worked on this FPP for a year, and he just... posted it out

July 17, 2017 6:51 PM

It's every reporter's nightmare: you work on a story for days/weeks/months/years and right at the finish line someone else beats you to print. Elon Green asks journalists Have you ever been scooped?
posted by Horace Rumpole (13 comments total)

Scooped by the subject of your investigation?
posted by blue_beetle at 7:22 PM on July 17, 2017

I think every reporter's nightmare is being wrong. Being scooped sucks, but it's often unavoidable and doesn't (necessarily) mean you did your job badly. It's happened to me, albeit not on anything huge, but I've also enjoyed the thrill of scooping much larger news organisations.
posted by retrograde at 10:12 PM on July 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

Read to the end. That last story is incredible (although the subject of the scoop is awful).
posted by matildatakesovertheworld at 11:57 PM on July 17, 2017 [7 favorites]

I really enjoyed the one about how the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist at the WaPo is consistently scooped on news about Trump's business connections by the society reporter of the Palm Beach Daily News (circulation: ~7,000).
posted by phoenixy at 12:15 AM on July 18, 2017 [9 favorites]

I realize that it's a bit silly to complain about an inside-baseball story in a publication for the profession of journalism, but I found something off-putting about this - the centrality of getting credit, scoring a coup, as if the journalist's career, not the story, is the most important thing.
posted by thelonius at 5:37 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

The first thing that comes to mind is American Public Media's excellent podcast about the Jacob Wetterling abduction, and 2 weeks before they were scheduled to release the first episode, the case was actually solved (after 27 years!). That was just a stunning event. APM did a good job with it, though, since they had framed the podcast as a dive into the investigation, as opposed to a "What happened to Jacob?" angle. So the solution of the case wasn't a spoiler, but wow. The timing.
posted by Autumnheart at 6:04 AM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

> I realize that it's a bit silly to complain about an inside-baseball story in a publication for the profession of journalism

Yeah, it's pretty silly. Do you go into chess threads and complain about spending time on the details of a stupid game when people are starving in Asia?

Great piece, and extra thanks for matildatakesovertheworld for making sure I read to the end!
posted by languagehat at 6:55 AM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

To be fair, Palm Beach, and the Gold Coast in general, is/are the home of some of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet. The paper might only have 7000 readers, but those 7000 have an awfully disproportionate influence on the rest of us.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:19 AM on July 18, 2017

> ...the centrality of getting credit, scoring a coup, as if the journalist's career, not the story, is the most important thing.

Reporters have careers they would like to further, and they would like to earn money. These are not at odds with performing a valuable service.
posted by ardgedee at 12:56 PM on July 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

Holy crap, that last story is insane.
posted by brundlefly at 4:42 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

...the centrality of getting credit, scoring a coup, as if the journalist's career, not the story, is the most important thing.

Reporters, the vast majority of them, get very little reward for some very hard work. You would begrudge them bragging rights?
posted by tommyD at 5:18 PM on July 18, 2017 [2 favorites]

I've definitely been scooped on *Metafilter*.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:26 PM on July 18, 2017

That's the worst.
posted by rhizome at 9:42 PM on July 18, 2017 [1 favorite]