It's a perennial newsroom quandary: When a reporter has a hot story, should you break it online immediately or hold it for the press or airtime deadline? This was the theme of a great discussion recently in one of the many media-related forums in which I participate.
Plenty of opinions were voiced. However, I was most struck by an anecdote related by Damon Kiesow, Online Managing Editor for the Nashua (NH) Telegraph. Here it is, with his permission (emphasis added):
Kiesow wrote, "The last time we had this debate in the newsroom was about six months ago. As we readied the story for the Web we had the perfunctory discussion -- break it online or not?
"After we posted it around 5:00 pm I happened to surf over to a local online discussion forum. People there had been discussing our 'exclusive' for the better part of 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."
I was at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1997-98. We...
