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Category: Odd + Funny, Technology Author : JR Posted: August 25, 2008
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“Obama Picks Clinton”: The Danger of Pre-Writing Web Stories


Pre-writing a story is something journalists have done for decades, whether it’s soon-to-occur obits or outcome-unknown elections. In the era of the Internet, though, accidentally publishing those preemptive pieces has become all too easy.

Case in point: The L.A. Times set live five different stories announcing Barack Obama’s VP pick Saturday — one for Hillary Clinton, one for Evan Bayh, one for Chet Edwards, one for Kathleen Sebelius, and then the right one for Joe Biden.

The Clinton post refers to the prospective duo as the “dream team,” as CNET News conveniently caught over the weekend. Suffice it to say, the errant articles didn’t stay up for more than a few hours.

Is it the “Dewey Defeats Truman” of the 21st century? It may not be as extreme a scenario, and its impact was certainly far less widespread — but the comparison does largely hold true.

Of course, this isn’t the first blunder of its kind we’ve seen in the Web world…and I’m sure it won’t be the last, either.




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  • excellent reporting!
  • This isn't new with internet reporting. I worked in the photography department at the Reuters news agency in London during the early 1990s while I was a student, and they had files ready and waiting to go for the deaths of aging celebrities, mostly notably the Queen Mother. They were desperate to be first with the news, especially since they mostly acted as a resource for the main newspapers and broadcasters and competed with the likes of AP, AFP and others. I wondered whether anything ever accidentally got sent out on these figures ahead of their actual demise, and sure enough a few months later one news source (not Reuters) accidentally sent out their pre-written "The Queen Mother is dead" story rather prematurely. This was in the days well before the true rise of the Internet. The Internet has perhaps accelerated things a little but hasn't changed much at a fundamental level...
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