The water’s fine

If you followed me on Twitter yesterday, you saw fairly frequent updates via text from Great Hunt for Martha Stewart. There have been rumors that the media-mogul would be the secret guest to visit Kannapolis and the N.C. Research Campus for the last week, and Thursday morning, news leaked that she was in town.

Our campus reporter staked herself out there in the morning, and the Post sent me and a photographer to help in the afternoon. For the first two hours or so, this consisted of me driving up and down the two public roads on the campus. I was on foot when I finally saw the blue Range Rover Stewart was being toured around in by campus founder David H. Murdock. He stopped the car, and she graciously answered a few questions and let our photographer take a picture. I really appreciated the time they gave us.

The Post put its first story on the Web identifying Stewart as the mystery guest around 2 p.m. We posted photos and a short article around 4:30 p.m. A longer article appeared on A1 today.

Today, my editor asked me a philosophical question: By posting the news online saying “Martha’s in town,” did we tip off our competitors when they otherwise might not have gotten the story? The Post’s instinct has been to hold off with exclusives until the print edition. (This summer, after a prominent dentist in town was murdered, I overheard talk in the newsroom wanting to hold off publishing online certain details in the hopes that the TV stations wouldn’t be able to get the same information to break the news on their 6 p.m. newscasts.)

What I told my editor: The printed paper isn’t the Web site’s competition. And it the two products aren’t distinct from one another. It’s the same name! When salisburypost.com posts that Martha Stewart is in town, readers still associate that with the Post.

And as has been said:

If you’re not breaking stories throughout the day on a competitive beat, then even if you have a better story in the next day’s paper, you still got beat. (Media Shift, Dec. 2006)

In the case of the dentist’s murder, the TV and other print competitors got the information we saved through their own reporting. We ended up posting in online before the print edition came out anyways, only this time we followed the other outlets when we could have been first.

The Post, even in the time I’ve been here, is breaking more and more online before it goes to print. Readership on the Web site is making gains, from what I’ve heard, and there’s effort in the newsroom to be “Web centric,” as the buzz-word around here is. But the Post, like other papers, is still trying to adapt. As my editor said, “This is a completely different way of looking at things than we’re used to.”