"Breaking news is the most masturbatory thing journalists do. The reader couldn't give a flying fuck who broke it". Thus spake Felix Salmon, at the international journalism festival in Perugia.
And he has enlarged on his view that scoops are irrelevant to all but journalists here on his blog:
"Readers don't care who broke the news: only journalists care about that... Chasing after scoops is silly — especially in the 99% of cases where the news is certain to come out soon enough anyway.
Many highly-respected newscasts and magazines rarely or never break news; conversely, many low-quality, high-velocity websites are constantly churning out micro-scoops of zero importance.
It seems self-evident to me that all news organisations should decide whether or not to publish information based on the inherent quality of the content in question, and the degree to which that information serves the publication's readers.
Instead, far too many news organisations make their publication decisions based on what other news organisations have already published."
There's more before Salmon, an enterprising financial journalist and blogger, concludes:
"Let's try to move away from scoop culture, and away from journalism-for-journalists. Instead, let's serve our readers. The real readers. The ones who aren't on Twitter."
Commenters to his blog are not so certain. Sharon Simonson, formerly an editor of a "breaking news website" wrote: "When we broke news, our readership skyrocketed. When we followed our main competitors, even with a story that had more information and context, our readership moved, but only as an echo, not as the first shout. Readers care about breaking news."
Judith Evans agreed: "Without 'scoops and exclusives' a huge amount of the news we read simply wouldn't be out there. The assumption that most news would kind of make its way into the public domain anyway just isn't true."
But colman1860 was impressed with Salmon's "fantastic" polemic "until the last sentence." He wrote: "Being a long-form reader who doesn't just chase breaking news does not preclude Twitter use. Twitter is a fantastic medium in its own right."
My own view: Salmon is right: it is silly. But there is no denying that scoop-getting is what gets us journalists out of bed every day. Anyway, who says there is no merit in masturbation?
