NEWS EXCLUSIVES

NEWS EXCLUSIVES:

I remember when I was publishing the Hollywood Reporter the editor kept a count of our “exclusives”. This, she said was a meaningful measure of how well we were doing our job. I completely agreed but only on the basis that the exclusives were meaningful, not simply a lower level story that had meaning only to a few of our readers.

When I took a count of what our actual exclusives were and excluded those we counted but were far less meaningful we were about at parity with the other media serving our market. No media thinks it will get all the meaningful news first and works very hard to get as many as possible but the truth is the more meaningful the news the more widely covered it will be and getting something exclusive will be very difficult.

Keep in mind the only one who knows something is exclusive is the one reading the media that is making the claim, so the reason for the bragging must be about holding on to the reader or viewer one has.  Problem is if the “exclusive” is wrong, like the CNN debacle of this past week then the media only reinforces how poor a job they are doing and will force viewers, readers to look elsewhere for the “real” news.

I don’t know why this concept of exclusive is so pervasive in media today but it is almost epidemic. Every media wants to be first or exclusive and will report almost anything that they can just to be able to say it was exclusive.

Getting a news story first was always the goal but there was always the unspoken rule that the news be verifiably correct. Speed of reporting the facts was the object. That is no longer the case forcing readers and viewers to become more jaded in their assessment of media in general and news media in particular.